Camelot

by Giles Kristian

  I winced to see it, though there was no sharpening of her eyes in pain. No flinch of her arm at the blade’s bite. She just lay there, staring up at the thatch, her face drawn but peaceful-looking. Her hair shining like the gloss upon a raven’s wing.

  There was more blood than I expected. It was bright and hot, running in rivulets across that pale skin and dripping from it, tapping an urgent rhythm into the cup, which I held with two hands so as to ensure I did not waste a single drop. When it was full, I held the cup while Merlin bound the wound, and tried to avoid looking into Guinevere’s face. Yet I could not stop myself. What would my father think if he could see her lying there like this, trapped in this living death?

  ‘Here,’ Merlin said, taking the cup from me and walking it over to the cauldron. There he stood a while, muttering under his breath, invoking gods and the ancient knowledge of his order. Then he poured Guinevere’s blood into the cauldron and it hissed, steam rising, and I peered into the silver bowl to see the blood bubbling and blistering amongst the blackened herbs which lay across the bottom.

  The smoke was making me dizzy and I stepped back, and Merlin took up his druid’s staff and used it to stir the contents. Round and round, murmuring and counting and now and then thumping the staff down to further crush the leaves. He made me fetch water from the rain barrel and he added this bit by bit to the mixture, and when at last he was satisfied, he told me to put out the hearth fire, which I did with water, making the fuel hiss and the smoke become so thick that I could barely breathe.

  ‘Now I need Arthur.’ Merlin looked towards the door. ‘If he doesn’t come soon, Iselle will have to help me.’

  I didn’t ask why I could not help. In truth I was relieved, so I said I would go and fetch Arthur. But he returned moments later, as though he had known that he was needed. He looked surprised to see me inside the house, sharing that flame-gleamed and shadow-played room which was thick with smoke but thicker with ritual and conjuring. He looked almost angry, but Merlin pointed at the plants in his hand and muttered that Arthur had done well, and in that moment, Arthur seemed to forget that I was there, his eyes drawing back to Guinevere. His mind snagging once more on the thorn of hope.

  ‘Out with you now, Galahad,’ Merlin said, and so I left them to the druid, though I paused at the threshold and turned to take one last look, seeing Merlin pull the bear skin off the lady, who was naked beneath it. I saw Arthur looking down at her, holding the purple flowers he had gathered which Merlin did not need, then I turned away and stepped out, pulling the door closed behind me, drawing clean air into my lungs, my head spinning from the smoke and my guts squirming like a bag of eels.

  The voice startled rooks from the nearby copse and punched into my chest like a cold hand reaching for my heart. Banon’s black head came up from her forepaws and she whined towards the roundhouse. One of the horses in the stable whinnied and stamped. Gawain, Iselle and I looked at each other with wide, questioning eyes.

  The voice had been Arthur’s, and we turned our ears to the house, expecting to hear something more, some coherent words or explanation. For what we had heard was equivocal, a shout of pain as much as of exquisite pleasure and release, like a cry from the bed of lovers, and it hung unanswered in the dusk.

  ‘Has it worked?’ Taliesin asked Iselle. We had made a fire outside and sat watching the day seep from the world and dragonflies whirring through the warm air. The boy reached out to Iselle. She took his hand but could not answer him.

  Banon pushed herself up and walked towards the house, cocking her head to listen to that which we could not hear. Then Arthur’s voice again. Muffled. Something about the gods.

  The door clunked open and he staggered from it and dropped to his knees, his face white as bone and his eyes spilling tears across the hollows of his cheeks.

  ‘Arthur?’ Gawain said, standing. We all stood. It did not feel right to remain seated while Arthur knelt on the dried mud. ‘Arthur?’ Gawain said again, his tone wary. Almost afraid.

  Arthur held his fists clenched before him and his eyes were closed and his nostrils were wide because he was breathing deeply of the clean air like a man who fears what he has seen, or fears that he has seen what he knows is not there.

  Gawain was four paces from his lord and friend when Arthur opened his eyes and looked up at him.

  ‘Well?’ Gawain said. We had followed him but stood behind now. He was our shield against the worst.

  ‘She is here,’ Arthur whispered, looking into Gawain’s eyes, his own eyes welling with tears and all the sorrows of his life.

  Iselle and I looked at each other, hardly daring to believe what we had heard. Thinking that Arthur must have made some mistake born of his long torment.

  Gawain looked round at me and gestured that we should go in and see for ourselves. I looked at Arthur, who made no move, nor gave any word to forbid it, and so we went inside.

  Herb-scented smoke still hung in the air but in thinner veils now, lingering below the thatch and in the dark corners and drifting towards the open door. The cauldron lay above a pile of grey ashes which now and then pulsed with copper heat, though gave no flame. Merlin was at the table, pouring wine into a cup. He looked a broken man, bent and tremulous, the last withered leaf on a dying tree.

  ‘Cover her,’ Gawain rumbled under his breath.

  Guinevere lay on her bed as before, naked, though her skin was as dark as the shadows, which were deeper now that twilight lay across the marsh. Only the whites of her eyes showed, stark against the filth, and seeing Merlin’s hands the same colour, I realized that he had taken the contents of the cauldron, those herbs and the water, the blood and the tallow, and smeared it over Guinevere’s skin. He had even daubed it over her hair and the soles of her feet, and I shuddered to think of the ritual to which Guinevere and Arthur had been subjected.

  Iselle laid the bear fur over Guinevere as Merlin took her head in his hand, lifting it so that he could hold the cup to her lips. She seemed to breathe a little of the liquid in, watching Iselle, then watching me, her eyes sharp in a way that I had never seen them. She was seeing us. There was no doubt in my mind.

  The door creaked and Arthur came in and we moved apart to let him through.

  ‘You did it,’ Gawain said to Merlin, his voice as gruff as ever but his face almost young again with wonder.

  Merlin stood frowning, pressing a thumb into the triskele inscribed on his palm, as Arthur sat on the stool by the bed and took Guinevere’s salve-stained hand in both of his own.

  ‘My love.’ Arthur exhaled the words. He had fled from her and from the magic which had brought her back. But he was Arthur, warlord of Britain, and he had gathered his courage now. ‘My love. My Guinevere.’

  Arthur’s eyes were in Guinevere and Guinevere’s eyes were in Arthur and there was no distance between them now. No years. No bitterness.

  ‘My Arthur,’ she said, or tried to say, her lips making the shape though her voice was thinner than the smoke tendrils snaking towards the door.

  ‘You have been gone for so long,’ Arthur said. ‘So long.’ His tears dripped onto the bed.

  Guinevere clenched her teeth together and I saw the joints of her jaw pressing against the thin skin stretched across her face. She tried to speak but no words came and so Merlin brought the wine back to her lips and she drank, though some of the red liquid spilled down her chin and Arthur gently wiped it away with a finger.

  ‘Get this filth off her,’ he said to Merlin.

  Guinevere closed her eyes. Gathered herself. Opened her eyes in which the tears shivered. ‘I cannot stay, my love,’ she said.

  It had seemed to take all her effort just to speak, but the words themselves, though merely breath on the air, were savage and she knew it. For she looked at Arthur as though wishing she could take them back but knowing she could not.

  Arthur shook his head. He looked up at Merlin, as if he suspected the druid of having played some malicious trick on him. But Merlin did not flinch f
rom Arthur’s terrible stare, and seeing no guile in the old man’s face, Arthur looked back to Guinevere.

  ‘I’ve waited through the years,’ Arthur said, and Guinevere’s hand looked small in his. So small. ‘The gods have brought you back to me.’

  Her eyes fell shut and she exhaled a long time, as if that breath had been trapped inside her all the years. ‘I cannot stay, my love,’ she said.

  ‘Why not?’ Arthur asked, his voice frayed with anguish. His face a mask of torment such as I had never seen nor would ever see again. It was as if Arthur’s soul was draining away before my eyes, like a man with a spear wound in his belly bleeding and bleeding until he is gone. ‘You will grow strong,’ he said. ‘We will have our time at last.’

  Guinevere’s eyes closed and it seemed she slipped away again, and Gawain put a hand on Arthur’s shoulder, his own face, so scarred and broken by violence and hardship, now the face of a boy who is afraid of the dark.

  I felt I should not be there. This was not for my ears. Not for my eyes. And yet I could not walk away, because something told me, some voice whose vibration I could feel in my gut, that my father needed me to stay. To hear and to watch and to know.

  Arthur snatched a breath. And another. And with a look, Iselle sought Merlin’s permission to clean Lady Guinevere’s face with a linen cloth and bowl of water which she’d warmed in the hearth ash.

  Arthur looked up at her. ‘Thank you, Iselle,’ he whispered, as with the tenderest hand she wiped the dark paste from Guinevere’s face, revealing the white skin streak by streak. When it was done, Iselle took the bowl and the dirty cloth away and Arthur put a hand on Guinevere’s shoulder and gently shook her awake.

  ‘Arthur,’ she murmured, seeing him as if for the first time.

  Arthur managed a tired smile.

  ‘Let me go,’ Guinevere said, and Arthur’s smile died on his lips.

  ‘No.’ He shook his head, as if his will alone was enough. ‘No, I can’t,’ he croaked, his voice crumbling like ancient mortar threatening to bring down everything that ever was.

  Iselle and Taliesin were holding each other, and I envied the boy and yet I knew that Iselle’s touch would break me.

  Arthur lifted Guinevere’s hand to his lips and kissed it. ‘Why won’t you stay with me?’ he asked. Her eyes slid from Arthur onto me. I gasped, a sudden coldness flooding my bones. Yet I could not look away from those eyes, and Arthur looked up at me and I saw hatred in him, deep as an ocean. Dark and churning currents. Swallowing him.

  He looked back to Guinevere. ‘Because of him?’ he asked.

  I knew he meant my father.

  Guinevere’s eyes were mires of sadness and they held Arthur as a mother might hold her child. ‘He waits for me,’ she said, simply. Tears tumbled down her face, but her gaze clung to Arthur. ‘And I must go.’ She paused. ‘Please, my love, let me go.’

  Arthur closed his eyes. Tears fell into his beard. His chin fell to his chest and Guinevere watched him, their hands still clasped, their fingers entwined. Then Arthur took three shallow breaths and leant forward and kissed her forehead, pressing his lips there for a long time. Then he stood and turned and walked out of the house.

  We stood for a long while in Arthur’s wake. Afraid. Not knowing what to do. Having no words to hurl into the rising black water like offerings to appease some hateful god. It was Iselle who eventually broke the silence, asking Taliesin to heat more water so that she could continue to clean Guinevere.

  Merlin sat against the wall, brushed away the floor rushes to reveal a patch of hard earthen floor and took some bones from a pouch, which he spread before him. They looked like knuckles in the half-light. Gawain went to the table and poured himself a cup of wine, which he threw down his throat before refilling the cup. He was not the only one who sought escape from that place. From that night.

  I turned to the open door and the moonlight spilling through onto the rushes. ‘Leave him, Galahad,’ Gawain called out, his voice weary. ‘He won’t want anyone.’

  But perhaps Gawain was wrong. Perhaps Arthur would want Iselle. If he only knew. And so I left the others and, once outside, looked towards the grain store, smokehouse, stable and byre. I let my eyes sift the steading, then I looked in the direction of the marsh and that’s when I saw him, no more than a shadow moving towards the tall reeds. Where was he going?

  I followed him into the marsh and the moon-washed reed-beds, keeping my distance, careful not to fall from the narrow wooden track. Now and then, some creature, some frog or vole, plopped into the water. Moths and bats flitted above me, while all around me the reeds clattered and hissed. From somewhere to my right came the pig-like squeal of the secretive water rail skulking among the stems, and I kept going, needing to follow Arthur and yet not knowing why.

  An owl shrieked and I turned my eyes towards the distant woods, which I could not see for the tall reeds, and when I looked back along the shadowed track, I could not see Arthur either. Had he known I was following him? Who was I to intrude on his grief, a grief so terrible and deeper than the water around me from which the stink of rotting vegetation rose like steam from a foul broth? But Arthur still had Iselle. He still had his daughter. Surely, he would see that. And if he could not, then I would make him.

  And so I hurried along that ancient causeway, deeper into the marsh, where the reeds thinned and the moon sat in dark pools. Here the track was more substantial, made of large oak planks laid on top of dumps of brushwood and transverse timbers, so that I could move more quickly without fear of falling into the dark water.

  And yet I began to wonder if I had been mistaken about seeing Arthur. Had it been a trick of the night, or something more sinister? I stopped, looking back the way I had come. Something brushed my hair. A moth, I hoped. A vixen shrieked from the heathland margins to the north, between the nearby woodland and the reeds, and I drew my knife against the night.

  What if Lord Arthur was still back at the steading, and what I had seen was a thrys or some apparition from beyond the veil trying to lure me ever deeper into the marsh?

  A bird clattered up from the reeds and I turned to the sound, watching it clapping up and up towards the moon. Then I saw a dark hump on the wooden track and my heart kicked against my breastbone. There he was. He was crouching, or on his knees perhaps, leaning out over the water. Reaching for something.

  I took two steps and stopped. Arthur lifted his head and looked around. I stood still, the tall reeds brushing my right shoulder, and he did not appear to see me, for he turned back and lowered himself off the causeway and into the coracle that sat tied to the pilings.

  I wanted to call out to him. But I wanted to hide, too, and in that moment the sense of being an interloper, of meddling in things which I should leave alone, overwhelmed me and so I held my tongue and remained still. There was something else too. Some other sensation which I could not name but which lay upon me thick and heavy, so that I might not have been able to move even had I wanted to. As though some higher power, some god even, had cast his unseen net upon me and held me fast.

  I saw the dark shape of Arthur and, as he turned to push himself away from the causeway, his face washed pale in the moonlight. And it seemed that he saw me then. That he looked right at me. His eyes seeing into my eyes across the night as if across a dozen years, our lives no longer sharing the same night, our lungs not the same air. He was gone even before he was gone, yet I heard the splosh of the paddle in the water. Saw Arthur, the great warlord who was to have led us to victory, lean forward in the small craft and sweep it through the moon which shivered on the surface.

  I watched until the darkness swallowed him.

  I feel the animal’s fear. It is in her like a sickness and she pants in urgent rhythm, only ceasing and holding a silence now and then to listen. Then the panting again. She knows that her master has gone. She feels his absence and she fears it, the loneliness, as her wolf ancestors feared exclusion from the pack.

  His scent lingers in the ni
ght air still, but faintly, and ebbing all the while. Fading. And so, beneath the moon, we pad over to the gnarled old tree where his scent lingers strongest, having seeped into the trunk, having laced the long grass like some ethereal, consoling dew. And we lie down there, as though to rest beside him a while, as though to share the warmth which his flesh has sent into the soil at that place, like roots going down.

  Part of me, the part which can still disentangle my own awareness from Banon’s, wants to stay here, on this spot, for the dog’s sake. For she has been as loyal to Arthur as any man or woman ever was, and more loyal than some. More loyal than I. And it is a comfort to sense her absolute love. A faithfulness which cannot be sullied. An allegiance beyond corruption. And yet we cannot stay. I cannot stay.

  The door clumps open and the young woman steps out, smoke hazing behind her like a veil caught by the wind. Banon gives a whine, perhaps in protest at my coercion, but she cannot withstand me, and we rise, wearily, and leave the apple tree and the ghost of Arthur, padding towards her across the familiar ground, silent and as black as shadow.

  Tears glisten on her cheeks as she looks up at the stars and the moon. Banon nuzzles against her leg and she crouches and runs a gentle hand between the dog’s ears and speaks in soft words which we feel no less than her kind hand. Then we walk away, towards the byre, and look back, but her upturned face is washed in moonlight again, and so we give a plaintive whine. We walk a little further, turn back, whine again. The woman calls softly to Banon, and the dog replies with a sharp bark, then we are moving again, and I can feel that she is following. Iselle.

  My own Iselle.

  The byre door is ajar, and we slink into its dark interior and into the ancient scent of animals and old straw, dung and dust and the acrid stink of sheep from the grease on tools. Banon yips again, but she did not need to, for the young woman slips into the darkness and stands for a moment, letting it envelop her, letting her eyes grow accustomed, and sifting the shadow with them.

  I don’t have long. My hold on this animal is slipping away. If she were wild, I would already have lost her. But she is far from wild. And she is afraid and already misses Arthur, and perhaps she draws some comfort from my presence now and so lets me abide awhile. We walk into deeper darkness, and though Banon does not know why we do it, she does not fight me, and then she sits, tall on her haunches, her nose full of the scent of the rusty iron sickle leaning against the timber wall, and of the chain strung from a nearby beam, and of the coarse woollen cloth bundle which lies across an old scarred, mossy tree round once used as a chopping block.