The voice beckons me, but I hold Banon still, and she whines in protest now, not wanting to stay in the dark byre but wanting to go outside and wait for her master. And yet, the whining draws the young woman. She moves through a shaft of moonlight lancing through a split in the timber wall and stands beside us, scrubbing Banon’s nape and withers and speaking soft words. Banon touches her nose to the cloth bundle and licks it for the animal fat on it. But I am fading as fast as Arthur’s scent on the night air, losing my grip on the animal. I cannot stay. But I must.
Just a little longer.
The hand pulls us back towards the door and the night beyond, but I hold Banon to the spot and she barks once, and I feel my soul untwining from hers now, and her own nature flooding in. She stands. Turns. Trots back towards the night air. But the young woman picks up the cloth bundle, weighing it in her hands, and she takes it into the shaft of moonlight and unwinds the wool.
Going now. To him.
I rise into the dark.
I am coming.
Below me, the young woman lifts her discovery in the moonwash. Iron and steel. Ivory gleaming like cream. Polished wood. A blade to cut through the darkness like a firebrand.
I’m coming. My love.
Guinevere died in the night. Perhaps even at the same moment that Arthur drifted away into the lonely dark.
‘She is free now,’ Iselle told me when at last I returned to the steading. I had stayed a long time at the water’s edge, looking west into the night after Arthur. Dawn was breaking across the marsh in bands of pale gold, the air already alive with insects and brimming with bird song. Just like any other day. ‘I held her hand as she went,’ Iselle said, looking off towards the old apple tree against whose trunk Gawain sat clutching a wine skin, watching a hawk soar in circles high above the deep reed-beds, sweeping their expanse. ‘Merlin gave her a draught. For the pain.’ Iselle’s eyes found mine in such a way as to question this draught of Merlin’s without saying as much. What did it matter anyway?
So, Guinevere was gone too. I felt no jolt of surprise or fear, just the settling of weight upon my soul, like the peat turves stacked one upon the other under the eaves of Arthur’s house.
‘It’s over, then.’ My own words sounded far away, as empty as the wide sky above us.
Iselle untied a leather thong from around her wrist, pushed her copper hair back with both hands and tied it at the nape of her neck. There were dark shadows beneath her eyes and a tiredness in them that sleep could not cure. Yet still her savage beauty defied the callous dawn.
‘Where’s Taliesin?’ I asked. I could see Banon over by the tall reeds, her black tail swaying as she whined softly to the west, pining after her master, but the boy was not with her.
‘He is with Merlin,’ Iselle said, looking in the direction of the wood of sallow, hazel and ash.
I was surprised at that, for Taliesin had not strayed from Iselle’s side since we had found him, or rather since he had found us, on the Isle of the Dead. But then, who could blame a young boy for wanting to be away from this place and its ghosts? Especially a boy already burdened by ghosts known only to him, from which he could never be free, unless Merlin knew of some way.
I looked back at Iselle and her eyes were in me like a hawk’s talons in some prey’s flesh.
‘Did you know?’ There was a flush of blood in her cheeks but no suspicion in her face. She was beyond that. ‘I want the truth, Galahad.’
An unseen hand clutched at my throat. My chest tightened. I wanted to turn my face away, to slip the leash of her stare, but instead I looked into those green eyes which were so like those others which had closed in the night and would never open again.
‘Yes,’ I whispered. ‘I knew.’
I imagined the scene in the previous night, of Guinevere telling Iselle that she was her mother. I could picture Iselle’s face. The confusion and then the understanding. The sadness and then the anger.
‘Damn you!’ she said.
She closed her eyes, breathed deeply and exhaled, as someone trying to endure physical pain. When she opened her eyes, they were almost sharp enough to pierce my skin. ‘When did you know?’ she asked.
I held her gaze. ‘Merlin told me. When we came back here after Camelot.’
She hated that, hated that I had known for so long. Her teeth fretted at her bottom lip as she fought her anger. ‘Damn you, Galahad,’ she said again. ‘Why did you keep it from me?’
I considered the question. I had been afraid to tell her. That was one reason I had kept Merlin’s secret. But that was not the only reason. ‘I did not think it would help you to know.’
‘Merlin made you swear to say nothing?’ she asked, as if hoping it were true. As though that would at least be something.
I shook my head. ‘No. It was my decision.’ I paused. ‘There were many times I thought to tell you, but I chose not to.’
Again, she let a silence grow between us, spreading like a bloodstain in linen. Banon looked around to us, crying, asking us where Arthur was.
‘You decided it was not my right to know who my parents were,’ Iselle said.
‘It was a burden which I would have spared you,’ I said. ‘I know about such burdens.’ I reached out to take her hand, but she pulled it away, pointing a finger at me.
‘You had no right,’ she spat. ‘No right to keep that from me.’
‘I know,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
She pressed her palms to her face, then pushed her hands up through her hair, dragging the tresses back, pulling on them, her hands shaking.
‘And I’m sorry that your father left you on that hill, Galahad. I’m sorry that he never came back for you.’ She threw an arm wide and gritted her teeth. ‘But perhaps my father would have stayed if he had known.’
‘Maybe he did know,’ I said. ‘But Arthur could never have been a father to you. He was a warlord. That was his reason for breathing. That and Guinevere.’ I should have held my tongue. I was a fool. And yet it was true. Arthur and my father were the same in that way. Both impelled by greater ambitions than the raising of children. Both spurred by crueller demons than those which taunt normal men. Both in thrall to the same woman, too, and perhaps to the exclusion of all other love.
‘He might have stayed.’ There were tears in her eyes.
‘No, Iselle.’ I gestured at the animal pens, at the sorry-looking sheep and swine and the clutter of near derelict buildings which comprised the farmstead. ‘Look at this place.’ She did not need to look. ‘Arthur son of Uther has been gone for years,’ I said. Iselle’s eyes hardened then and I knew that I had wounded her and I hated myself for it. I wanted to tell her I was wrong to keep it from her. That I wished I had told her when Merlin had shown me the truth. I wanted to say that perhaps Arthur would have stayed if Iselle had asked him to, even though I knew he would not have. But I said none of this.
Iselle strode over to the house and snatched up her arrow bag and her bow and her long Saxon sword, which leant in its scabbard against the wattle wall. Then she turned towards the rising sun and headed for the trees.
And I watched her go.
21
Iselle
‘WHAT DO YOU MEAN she’s gone?’ Merlin said. ‘Gone after Arthur?’ Taliesin stood at his shoulder, a dead hare in one hand, a bunch of red campion in the other. Behind them, the horses stood head to tail in the shade of the byre, swishing their tails, shivering off clouds of flies and cropping the long grass.
I shook my head. ‘No, she went east. Towards the woods.’
Merlin swung his ash staff at me, so that I had to step back or else be hit. ‘And you let her go?’ he accused, glaring. Taliesin was looking towards the tree line, his young face clenched with worry.
‘She was angry,’ I said.
The druid lifted the staff and pointed it at me as though about to cast some curse or spell. ‘Of course she was angry, Galahad,’ he said. ‘You have known all this time that she was Lord Arthur and Lady Guinevere�
�s daughter and yet you kept it from her.’
I frowned at him. ‘As did you.’
‘But she does not love me, you fool.’ He planted the staff on the ground and placed both hands upon its knotty head.
Merlin’s horse lifted its head, flared its nostrils and gave a loud snort followed by a nicker. I followed its line of sight and saw riders coming through the orchard of gnarled old apple trees, their armour, helmets and bosses gleaming and their spear blades winking in the late afternoon sun.
‘We fetched them,’ Merlin said, lifting his staff in welcome to the Lords Parcefal, Gediens and Cai, and the rest of the horse warriors who rode at their shoulders.
‘Do they know?’ I asked. ‘That it’s over?’
‘I told them that Lady Guinevere was free at last.’ Merlin shrugged. ‘So perhaps they know that Arthur will not ride again.’
Gediens and I greeted each other silently across the distance and when they had walked their horses into the steading they dismounted, looping reins over the top rails of the animal pens and some of them looking around as if in wonder that this was where their lord, the great warrior of Britain, had lived these past ten tears.
I did not want to face Gediens and the others, to be the one to tell them. But Gawain was still slumped against the apple tree, drunk out of his mind, and some of the men were already looking at me and so I walked to meet them, a painful lump in my throat and a sour taste in my mouth.
‘Where is he, Galahad?’ Parcefal called, while I was still three spear lengths from where they had stopped and stood now as though unwilling to cross some invisible threshold. A threshold of knowing.
‘He’s gone.’ I gestured behind me. ‘Into the marsh. Last night.’
Parcefal and Cai shared a look which seemed to confirm their fears, while a low rumble rose amongst the men around them. Gediens, though, watched me quietly, waiting for more.
‘I don’t think he will return,’ I said.
‘You can’t know that.’ Lord Cai pointed a finger at me, as though warning me against speaking thus.
‘Maybe when the fighting starts,’ Cadwy said. ‘Maybe then he’ll come.’
Medyr, who had removed his helmet to run a hand through his black curls, agreed with this. ‘When we need him most, he will come.’ He looked at me. ‘As Lancelot did.’
I did not gainsay either of them, but held my tongue, knowing that I was witnessing the death throes of hope.
‘It’s over,’ someone growled. I turned to see Gawain lumbering towards us, a wine jug in his hand. He lifted it to his mouth and emptied the contents down his throat, some of the liquid spilling through his greying beard onto the grass. ‘Over,’ he snarled, and hurled the jug against the roundhouse and it shattered into pieces. ‘Arthur is not coming back. It has all been for nothing.’ He stood on unsteady legs, swaying like a lonely ash in the wind.
‘Stop your wallowing, Gawain,’ Merlin snapped, coming to join us, planting his staff with every other step, his grey beard braided and stiff as rope. ‘It does not become a Prince of Lyonesse.’
For a heartbeat Gawain gawked at the druid, then he lumbered forward, snarling his hands into Merlin’s cloak and tunic and lifting the old man off the ground.
‘You are the reason she’s dead, druid!’ Gawain spat, as Gediens and I rushed to intervene, each of us taking hold of one of Gawain’s arms and pulling to bring Merlin safely back down, Gawain bawling at us to get off him.
‘Leave him, Gawain,’ I said, as Merlin pulled free and staggered back out of the big man’s reach.
‘He brought her back, knowing she would die,’ Gawain accused the druid. All eyes turned on Merlin then. ‘You found her before, didn’t you? When you put on the feathered cloak? You found her, druid,’ Gawain spat, his words slurring one into another. He hurled an arm towards the sky. ‘You found her out there somewhere, and she told you she wasn’t coming back.’
Merlin may have been old and frail, but he had courage enough to square his shoulders to Gawain, and there was a hawk-like fury in his face that put ice in my belly and had some of the men touching iron to ward off whatever malicious spell they expected the druid to cast.
‘I found her,’ Merlin admitted, ‘and I tried to bring her back to Arthur. But Guinevere’s heart belonged to Lancelot. It always did.’ His voice was steady, something in it compelling every ear to attend his truth. He stepped forward, back into Gawain’s reach, and pointed a gnarled finger at the warrior. ‘You knew that. You’ve always known.’
Gawain turned his head and spat into the grass. ‘What does it matter now?’ He shrugged. ‘It’s finished. We cannot fight without Arthur. No one will come.’ Then he turned to me and his scarred face was almost unrecognizable. ‘Your father has cost us everything,’ he snarled. ‘Even in death, he has ruined us.’
Rage took hold in me, sudden and hot. I flew at him. I hit him so hard that he staggered several steps and fell onto his arse amongst the grass and the yellow and white bone flowers which seemed to stare like a thousand eyes.
‘Peace, Galahad,’ Gediens hissed, taking hold of me, for I had taken three steps towards Gawain, my blood boiling. ‘Peace now.’
‘There he is.’ Gawain stared up at me, a grimace of a smile warping his mouth. ‘There’s the man who would have ridden with us to drive the bastard Saxons back into the sea. He’s a damned killer, just like his father.’
Breaking free of Gediens, I hauled Boar’s Tusk from its scabbard and held its point against Gawain’s throat, and Gawain lifted his chin, offering me the kill, and in that moment, I wanted to thrust the blade forward, as Gediens and Parcefal yelled at me to lower my sword and back away.
‘It’s lost,’ Gawain said. ‘It’s all lost.’
My vision cleared and I saw Boar’s Tusk at Gawain’s neck. Saw Taliesin staring at me with round eyes. For a moment I thought I heard his voice, the intoxicating enchantment of his singing, swirling in my head like a warm breeze amongst summer leaves. But it could not be, I knew. The boy’s lips were fastened.
I pulled the blade away.
‘Galahad, find Iselle,’ Merlin said, his voice coming to me like wind seeking through a cave. ‘Do you hear me? Go now and bring her back.’
I was half aware of Parcefal and Cai lifting Gawain to his feet. And of Tarawg, Nabon, Medyr and some of the others saying that they wished to see Lady Guinevere in spite of everything, for they had once loved her and served her and they would pay their respects before we burned the lady on a pyre and gave her ashes to the western wind.
‘Go, Galahad,’ Merlin snapped, his teeth bared, his hair fraying in the breeze. ‘Find her.’
I felt I was drowning, flailing for something to hold on to, thoughts whirling in my head, and each breath too thin and weak to sustain me. But I had wits enough to know that I must escape that place. And I had blood enough in my veins to know that I wanted Iselle. That I needed her. And so, I turned my back on them all, fetched a spear from the byre and set off towards the trees, above which the rooks eddied in a black cloud, crying for the death of our dream.
I did not find Iselle. She found me. I heard the whip crack of the arrow hitting the willow trunk beside me and was relieved to see that the fletchings quivering at the end of the shaft were white.
‘What do you want?’ she called. The arrow told me to look for her amongst a clump of alder to my right, though I could not see her. I was reminded of the day we met, when she had killed the Saxons who would otherwise have killed me.
‘Merlin wants you to come back,’ I said. Like the coward I was.
‘Why?’ she asked, still not revealing herself.
In truth I did not know why Merlin had sent me to fetch her. Maybe to stop me killing Gawain or Gawain killing me.
‘Gediens and Lord Cai and the others have come,’ I said.
Somewhere nearby, a sedge warbler was chattering, rejoicing for the bounty of mayflies, moths and lacewings that were on the air, thick in the gloaming.
‘It is
over.’ There was such sadness in her voice. ‘They will not fight now. Not without Arthur.’ She stepped out from behind an alder, her bow down by her side. My heart kicked in my chest. ‘The war is lost before it ever began,’ she said.
‘Lord Constantine will fight on,’ I said.
‘He can’t win. You know that.’
I nodded. ‘Come back with me. It will be dark.’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ she asked.
I took a breath. ‘They would have brought you only pain. They were not what they once were.’
Even across the distance I saw her brows draw down. ‘You never believed that they could be together again? That Arthur would lead us in battle?’
‘I wanted to believe it,’ I said honestly. I looked into the west, where the sun was a fiery shield sinking to the horizon. Swallows and swifts skimmed the reed heads, taking insects on the wing.
‘It will be dark,’ I repeated.
She said nothing. Her silence said everything.
‘I should have told you,’ I said. ‘I’m sorry.’
Whatever Iselle was thinking, she kept it to herself, but I saw in her face that she was asking questions of others now, not of me, and so I took my chance and walked towards her.
‘I’m sorry,’ I said again, and I put my arms around her and she gathered into herself, taut as a drawn bow, but I held on and she softened and I kissed her copper hair and breathed her in as though they were my last breaths.
‘Do you think he knew?’ Her voice was so quiet that it almost did not invite a reply.
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