by Lavie Tidhar
He should stay down. He’s naked, bloodied, bruised and broken-ribbed. He’s dog meat now, perhaps he just doesn’t realise it yet.
The Guv’nor stands. Sir Carados of old Londinium, the boss of bosses. Sure, he’s sick and he’s old and he’s, well, he’s dying, but then, isn’t everyone, from the very moment of their birth, dying, if you really think about it? Sir Carados is not dead yet, is what he means. It is a message that his audience cannot fail to receive.
They stand all around the courtyard. The sun is down and the night is dark and torches burn and the shadows dance. The air smells of burning wood and men’s stench, of blood.
They are all here. They are assembled. The Frankish Mob and the White Hill Gang and the Knights of Bors and Sir Hector and his son Sir Kay. In the shadows stand the grim old men of the outside, the quiet kings: Leir and Outham the Old and Conan Meriadoc.
It is a body of men, a silent mob. All watching. All waiting. Sir Carados steps forward. He is impeccably dressed today. He wears his oldest sword. He raises his huge fists and slips on iron knuckles.
This will be settled the old-fashioned way.
He takes a step, and then another.
Stay down, boy, and this will all be over quickly.
Stay down, boy.
Racing desperately through the night across Londinium, a lonely crow beats wings against the hostile winds.
On the ground under the light from the burning torches, the boy, Arthur, stirs.
He opens his eyes. He sees Sir Carados.
He spits blood.
Pulls himself up on his knees.
Stay there, boy. Stay kneeling.
Stay down, boy.
Sir Carados bears down on him. His fist, with those nasty metal knuckles on it, connects with the side of Arthur’s face. It smashes it good. It smashes it hard. The punch sends Arthur flying back.
The crowd murmurs. Eager, excited. They love the smell of blood. This is the court and I am the king, those are the words the watching men hear.
Sir Carados advances. The boy, Arthur, opens his eyes. Spits blood. Scrambles back. Scrambles, but no one will help him. Kay watches, helpless to intervene. High above the city, the crow, Merlin, dives towards the palace.
Late, he thinks. Too late.
Sir Carados swings a fist. The metal casing gouges Arthur’s skin, it breaks a bone, it slams him to the ground again.
Sir Carados towers over him, breathing heavily. He coughs. His body shakes. He hawks up dirty phlegm and gobs a load on Arthur’s face.
Stay down, boy. Stay down and this will all be over soon.
The crowd murmurs appreciatively. Money, furtively, changes hands.
On the ground, the beaten naked boy opens his eyes.
Kay watches, helpless.
A crow dives down from the skies, but he is still too far, too far.
Sir Carados reaches for his sword. It’s time to end this.
The boy scrabbles back, desperate to live.
And hits an obstacle.
He stops.
He’s hit a rock.
There’s nowhere else to go.
Stay down, boy.
Stay down.
Carados advances. The boy slams one palm into the ground. Pushes himself upright, holding on to the stone. The useless sword’s still stuck in it.
He looks. You can see him thinking.
In the audience, all those knights and kings had tried their turn and wrote it off as just another goof.
Carados advances. He raises his sword. He is breathing heavily. His forehead is beaded with sweat. He is not a well man, is Sir Carados.
Arthur’s fingers close on the hilt of the sword in the stone. He tries a tug.
To the onlookers’ dismayed surprise, there’s no resistance.
The blade slides out smooth.
*
It is at that moment when his fingers close on the hilt of the sword and he pulls it out of the stone that he knows he would be king. Not by divine right or by line of descent.
By force alone.
*
As Sir Carados raises his blade for the fatal strike, Arthur falls forward, and the sword in the stone slides out and swings and strikes true.
It slides deep into the Guv’nor’s belly, up to the hilt, and stays there.
Sir Carados looks down with an expression of faint surprise on his face. The torch fire casts angry shadows on the floor. A crow falls down from overhead, and a cat tiptoes in between the feet of the rapt crowd.
‘…Oh,’ Sir Carados says.
He sits down heavily.
He clutches his belly. A look of confusion, or perhaps relief, suffocates his bloated features. He grasps the hilt of the sword and tries to pull it out of himself, but he has not the strength to do it.
Arthur, beaten and bloodied, crawls to Sir Carados. He barely looks at the man. He reaches for the sword – his sword. He pulls it out of the man’s belly.
Sir Carados’ blood jets up, hits Arthur’s face, drips down his chest and arms. Sir Carados sinks back with a soft, sad whoomph.
His eyes close. In death, he shits himself.
Arthur pushes himself upright. The crowd take a step back, involuntarily. Arthur turns to face them. He is half-blinded by the torchlight and the blood in his eyes, but he marks their faces.
He raises the sword high up in the air.
He stares defiance.
He screams.
‘Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough!’
PART THREE
THE COUNCIL OF SIX
25
And Ulfius remembers that night, one year ago now.
They were summoned to the old governor’s palace by Sir Kay. How silent it was, when they arrived. How pale the faces of the men who stood there in the torchlight.
He saw the king, then. Arthur, naked and bloodied, holding a sword.
How savagely he grinned, and the sword, it had been the one in the stone, even Ulfius had paid his copper and had a go at trying to pull it out, a harmless thing it had seemed then, an amusement at a fair.
But Arthur pulled out the sword, and he had slain the old Guv’nor; and the other men, those fearsome knights, stood and watched him and they were helpless before him.
He was the boss of bosses now.
And how they’d cheered, his boys, Ulfius and Agravain of the Hard Hand, and Elyan the White, and Owain, the Bastard. Arthur’s boys. Arthur’s knights. And the others fell from them; and they lifted Arthur up and carried him away back to barracks, and in the morning the whole of Londinium knew that the game had changed.
The king was dead. Long live the king.
That was a glorious time.
But now, running through the black night, his right side aflame in agony from the sword that pierced him, Ulfius is scared, more scared than he has ever been.
‘Eli, eli, lama sabachthani?’ he murmurs. He staggers on the uneven terrain. His mind is filled with the flames of the burning castle and the sound of clashing swords and the screams of dying men. Some unfamiliar bird crows overhead and makes him start. Though he’s been running for a long time he has the uncanny sense of being followed silently.
There are no cities. There are no towns. The stars are hidden behind clouds.
This is no place for a God-fearing Christian to be. There are too many… things that walk and crawl and hop and fly on a night such as this, when the devil rides out and all his creatures are loose. So much death.
And he wonders if his king, Arthur, is still alive.
The night sounds frighten him. The pain in his side is so bad. Oh, Lord Jesus, some say that after you died and were reborn you came here, to this fair land, and if so perhaps you could spare a moment for your poor follower, humble Ulfius, who is in rather considerable pain and does not, most devoutly does not wish to die on this night. Not after all the death he was already witness to.
His heart races. He hears running water, the soft murmur of a nearby brook. The ground
rises. He stumbles over roots and stones.
‘God!’ he cries, in anguish. He kneels in the dirt. Surely he can go no more.
And so Ulfius prays in the words he was taught. ‘Infinitely merciful as You are, it is Your will that we should learn to know You. You made heaven and earth, You rule supreme over all that is. You are the true, the only God; there is no other god above You.’
And for a moment, it is as though his God has heard. For a soft light shines ahead, and it illuminates a path! And Ulfius pushes himself up, and he staggers up the slope, and he comes to the mouth of a cave, carefully hidden in the mountain. And he smells fresh, soft grass and the air seems scented with beautiful flowers, and with a glad heart he enters.
‘Sit the fuck down, Ulfius,’ a voice says.
This is clearly not the word of the Lord.
Ulfius starts, for the light hurts his eyes after the darkness. A small fire burns within a circle of stones on the cave’s floor, and next to the fire sits the king’s wizard, Merlin.
He raises those pale and disconcerting eyes and examines Ulfius much as a frog might examine a fly.
‘Why are you not at your king’s side, Ulfius?’
Ulfius collapses heavily to the ground. He is so glad to be still, and for the warmth of the fire, and even, he realises with some surprise, for the wizard’s presence.
‘…It’s a long story,’ he says.
The wizard stirs the firewood with a stick, and sparks fly into the air.
‘You’re wounded,’ he says.
‘You’re very observant.’
‘Is the king alive?’
‘…I do not know.’
Ulfius feels so very tired. He wants to close his eyes and sleep. To sleep forever – would that be such a bad thing? The priest, Father Matthew, spoke to him of Heaven, but will he be allowed inside its gates, all things considered? Or will he be sent… to that other place?
He reaches for the small iron cross round his neck, and the wizard turns from it sharply.
‘Put that damned thing away!’
‘Is it the cross that bothers you, or the iron?’
He doesn’t much like the wizard, it has to be said.
‘That shit isn’t gonna heal you, Ulfius. But I will.’
The wizard checks Ulfius.
‘Does it hurt here? Here? Here?’
‘Ow! Ouch! Stop that!’ Ulfius says.
‘It looks like you’ve been cut by a sword.’
‘I have been cut by a sword, you fucking unnatural thing!’
‘Tut, tut,’ the wizard says. ‘Do you want me to help you or not?’
‘Yes,’ Ulfius says reluctantly. The Wizard pinches his skin along the open cut. Ulfius screams. The wizard brings the two folds of skin together and mutters something. He runs a finger along the join and it is like a burning blade, and Ulfius screams again, but the skin seals with a sort of burning smell.
‘You’ll have an ugly scar to match your ugly face,’ Merlin says.
‘Thanks. I guess…’
The wizard sits back down. Stirs the fire. Stares into the flames.
‘Why weren’t you there?’ Ulfius says. There might be just the tiniest hint of reproach.
‘I was called away.’
‘At this time?’
‘I was on the king’s business!’
They both settle down into silence and staring at the flames.
‘Do you happen to have some food?’ Ulfius says.
‘I don’t eat much.’
‘But do you have some f—’
The wizard tosses him a pouch. Ulfius opens it, extracts half a loaf of bread, a small hard cheese, a wizened apple. He doesn’t complain. He eats.
‘So it did not go well?’ the wizard says.
‘Not really.’
‘Things got… messy?’
‘You could say that again,’ Ulfius says, with feeling.
They sit and stare at the fire.
‘So are you going to tell me?’
‘Where do I even start?’
‘In the beginning,’ Merlin says. ‘That’s usually good.’
‘…Alright.’
Ulfius takes a deep breath.
‘As far back as I can remember,’ he says, ‘I always wanted to be a knight.’
*
‘You have to understand what it was like, Merlin. Growing up in Londinium like we did. We had nothing. My father was a fisherman, he died on the river. My mother took in washing and, when that didn’t pay, men. You had to make a living. We boys learned to fish and catch game on the south side, and we kept a garden and some sheep. But there were too many of us and we were always hungry, and I never did have a taste for fish.
‘My father, he had Roman blood. Back when he was alive he always spoke about the Old Country, like it’d meant something. He’d never even been farther than the Fleet. Then he drowned, drunk on his boat one time.
‘So I learned there was an easier way to live. The local knights were the White Hill Gang. I used to see them every day, sitting outside their popina, drinking watered wine and nibbling on olives like they were back on the Aventine. That’s in Rome. Even before I went over there one day to ask for a job, I always knew I wanted to be one of them. To me, being a knight was better than anything else in the world, better than being Caesar.
‘To be a knight meant to be somebody! They had the swords and they had the attitude and they offered protection. There was no one you could turn to if you had problems – not the sad excuse of what was left of the Watch, not the king because we didn’t have one. The knights provided order in a world that no longer had any. They weren’t like anybody else. They did whatever they wanted, because they could.
‘I wanted some of that for myself.
‘The Black Knight of the White Hill Gang liked me. I was big and strong and I could use my fists. He had me do the occasional job for them, carrying stuff or bashing heads, whatever they needed. You have to understand, they were good Romans! They were from the Old Country, they did things the Old Country way. One time, my mother was crossing the road and a couple of the lads from down the street came and gave her a chicken. A whole chicken! You know why they did that, Merlin? It was out of respect.
‘Anyhow, that’s how I grew up. Then word spread around about Arthur – King Arthur, I mean, only he still wasn’t king then – and the Goblin Fruit heist. I wasn’t a made guy, I wasn’t a knight and I knew the White Hill Gang wasn’t going to make me any time soon. They were older guys and they did things the old way and they still believed in the Empire – they still believed in Rome. I knew there was no Caesar going to come back to Britain, there wasn’t going to be no new governor in Londinium, no legions coming over to fight any more wars. It was just us, here.
‘So I went to Arthur. I was one of the first to sign up. I wanted to be in his gang. I wanted to sit at the Round Table. He told us we were all equal sitting round it – it had no head, see.
‘Then he pulled that stunt with the sword in the stone and killed the old Guv’nor… well, that’s when I knew this was all going to happen for real.
‘What?
‘The cross? What about it?
‘Brought up that way. It’s not that unusual. Came over from the Old Country with the missionaries. They’re all doing it back over there. Had a priest, Father Matthew, he taught me my letters, well, much as he could, anyway. I’m better at remembering things than writing them down. Handy with a sword, too.
‘See, that’s the thing. It ain’t like the old days, when it was each knight to himself. I’m serving the Lord, doing this. This is God’s work. I’m sure Arthur will see the light of truth, for it cannot be hidden under a bushel, as the Christ said.
‘Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall be satisfied. The Christ said that, too. Don’t you see? That means us! It’s alright to fight and murder as long as it’s in the name of a higher power, as long as it’s in the name of the Lord.
‘You laugh
at me, wizard. But your kind cannot know the true love of Christ.
‘Anyway. All this you know already. The following few months were busy, of course. Arthur consolidated his power – much, I may add, with you whispering in his ear – and the other gangs all came under his domain. How quickly they bowed down to him! And most of all that loathsome Sir Hector.
‘Arthur was now, truly, the new Guv’nor. He was the lord of Londinium.
‘And were he content to be just that, all would be well. But of course Arthur wanted – deserved – more than that. He was king!
‘I was there when you told him. How proudly you proclaimed his true inheritance! The long lost son of Uther Pendragon, and the child of Queen Igraine of Land’s End! The hall was packed for your great reveal, and all the lords and ladies in attendance. Oh, they knew already, didn’t they. They knew you of old, and all of your tricks, wizard. I see you do not deny it. Yet it is one thing to know, and another to acknowledge.
‘His face! I will never forget his face. To know his mother was still alive! That he could see her! That longing, I believed, was genuine. But all the kings and lords assembled jeered and made a ruckus. So what if he were Uther’s bastard child? they said. They were masters of their own domains. Arthur must respect the code. He has won Londinium – well, fair game to him. Let him rule Londinium. But they had made it very clear that any claim he may wish to make beyond was not to be discussed.
‘Well… you know how that went with Arthur. Not well. Not well at all. So for the next few months we were doing drills and training – that Bors the Elder is a harsh master-at-arms, I can tell you that, wizard! – and then, at last, we were off.
‘We were a proper army by then. At least, I think so. Most of us had been in plenty of brawls and what not, at least. But we weren’t tested in real battle. Anyway. Arthur left Sir Kay to be his steward in Londinium, and his little pet wizard went off to – well, I’m sure I couldn’t say. Perhaps you’d care to enlighten me, Merlin? Where have you been all this time?
‘No? Alright, then. Keep your secrets, wizard. I won’t pry. So what can I tell you? It was a glorious day when we set off, banners waving high, a company of men marching out of the gates and into history. Or so Kay told us. The truth was, Merlin, none of us really knew what was out there. Beyond the city, I mean. And it was strange, to begin with. All that open space, and the stars overhead each night, and, well, birds. I guess I had expected forests, thick and dark, but all we got to begin with were lovely, rolling hills, green with grass and pasture, and well-kept villages with children fat as geese running around, and maidens lovely beyond compare smiling shyly at us soldiers. I tell you true, wizard – more than one child will be born in these places who could claim a knight for his father in the coming months.