by Lavie Tidhar
If she could find the grail she would be master.
‘I went deep,’ he says. ‘I mapped as best I could. The landscape’s changing. There is a foreign agent of some kind that’s altering the world beyond the wall. The animals and plants that survive are… different, somehow. And people. If you can call them people anymore.’
She yawns. ‘Why should I listen to you any further? I do not need a treasure, Lancelot, and with the bounty from their scrawny king I could go searching on my own.’
‘And how much time would you waste? While I head right through the maze to the prize?’
‘Then why don’t you, you little shit?’ she says.
‘Because I’m tired, Iblis. I’m tired of the quest. The grail’s not mine to find.’
She looks at him closely, then.
‘No,’ she says. ‘No, I do not believe you.’
‘What, then?’
And he tries hard to mask his private thoughts. A memory: a girl with golden hair and killer’s eyes, who smiled at him, and said little, all the while standing by her king.
‘Besides, I know you. You don’t care for the money any more than I do.’
‘I wish to join their circle,’ he says. Surprising her.
‘Their little round table? Whatever for? You’d be a knight? You’d only be a servant once again.’
‘If I must.’
‘Lancelot…’ She sighs. ‘You are a fool.’
‘I know.’
‘I am tempted to accept your offer. Which you have not quite made. So what is it, Lancelot? What’s her name?’
‘What? Whose?’ he says.
‘Are you blushing?’
‘What! No!’
‘I can’t imagine what floozy you picked up to drool over, unless… No! Say it ain’t so, it can’t be…’
‘Leave it, Iblis!’
‘Not that dead-eyed harlot of his, surely? Lancelot, even you… She’s killed more men than Locusta of Gaul!’
‘So have you!’
‘Yes, but darling, I have style. She’s just muscle.’
‘I said leave it, Iblis.’
‘I’ll take that map now,’ she says.
‘Alright.’
He passes her the parchment. They both stand, their parlay at an end.
‘I know you think you played me,’ Iblis said. ‘But you’re a fool, and you will only hurt from following this path of yours. Forget this Guinevere.’
‘And do what?’ he says.
‘Come with me.’
The offer hovers between them.
Slowly, he shakes his head. ‘No,’ he says. ‘I am done with the grail.’
‘You just replaced one unattainable object with another,’ she tells him. ‘Well, I wish I could say it’s been fun. I’ll see you on the other side, Lancelot.’
And then she’s gone.
He stands bereft, and feels that once again she’d got the better of their bargain. And he doesn’t understand. After a while, he stirs and follows the path down to the valley and enters the disguised palace.
He finds Leir slumped against a crate of apples in a storage room. The king’s throat has been cut. A note’s pinned to his chest with a paring knife. It says, ‘Enjoy’, and there’s the imprint of a kiss on the delicate vellum.
‘Damn it, Iblis!’
He ransacks the palace from top to bottom but finds nothing of use.
He goes to Leir. Dead, he doesn’t look like much. Just another contender.
Lancelot lifts the corpse’s head and swings his sword and it is done. He has his bounty.
But Iblis never cared about the bounty, he thinks now. She’d used Leir for what knowledge he had of the Lapis Exilis and then left him like – well, like leftovers, for Lancelot to find.
Well, fuck her, he thinks savagely. And fuck the grail! Let her go to her doom like so many others before her. What does he care for rocks from the sky?
And again he thinks of that blade of a woman with Arthur.
That golden hair and that quizzical smile, and the way she’d looked at him. He wants to hold her like a sword.
Guinevere.
PART NINE
THE WEDDING
56
‘How do I look?’ she says.
Guinevere adjusts the silver necklace. She touches her hair. She looks in the mirror. In the reflection she sees a man standing patiently in the corner of the room. His perfect stillness. Her would-be husband has set him as her bodyguard.
‘You look just fine,’ Lancelot says; there’s a weight of other, unspoken words between them.
She smiles. Nods. Adjusts the bangles on her wrists. Bends down to check on the hidden knife strapped to her ankle. Straightens and looks one last time.
All the while aware of his presence there. She smiles to check her teeth. Looks alright. There’s a packet on the dresser with some small dried mushrooms. She pops one in her mouth, chews. After a while she spits out what’s left.
Should be a nice, long trip, she thinks.
Lancelot’s there without seeming to have moved. He just materialises. Cloth in hand, to catch the discarded mushroom.
‘My lady.’
She shakes her head. There’s gold woven in her hair. It twinkles when she moves. She stares at the mirror and sighs.
‘Let’s do this,’ she says.
*
Outside it’s a glorious summer day. The bells ring across town, their peals come at her from everywhere, from the towers and the brothels, from the churches and the temples, from the beggars to the lords. The king her betrothed has sent out the bell-ringers to ring all across the city, and the square before the castle is filled with a throng. They have come to see her. They have come to gawk.
Well, let them! she thinks savagely. She takes her place in the procession. Her women are with her. Armed with short swords, crossbows, knives. They wend their way along the path to the raised wooden dais.
The wizard, Merlin, stands there in robes of garish purple, sewn with gold thread. He has made himself up for the occasion, too, she notices without surprise. He’s shed youth for more dignified age, has made himself rotund, with balding head and long grey beard, and he leans on a staff. She knows his tricks. He’s like a snake replacing skin. Inside he is the same as ever.
‘My lady Guinevere,’ he says, and bows.
She smiles. She has been doing that so much her lips are hurting.
‘Fuck you, too, Merlin,’ she whispers, and he smiles back.
‘It will all soon be over,’ he says.
Hanging overhead are three fat, squealing pigs. They’re hoisted up with ropes, and she had watched from her window as they were chased around the court and tied and pulled up by those whose job it is to maintain such facades. Someone had to build the dais and make arrangements for the crowd, and set up the latrines. Already they are hawking celebratory mugs and pouring cheap drinks for the spectators, and soon enough there’ll be fights and, with luck, a few corpses to loot, in the evening. There always are, at such events.
She wishes she was out there, picking their fucking pockets.
A hush falls on the crowd. From the opposite direction a second procession approaches. There ride the knights: Bors the Younger, and the Green Knight, and Elyan the White, and Agravain of the Hard Hand. Ruthless motherfuckers the lot of them, murderers without a saving grace between them. But there you go.
And then there’s him. He rides in their midst, moving with a quiet intensity. Arthur, her Arthur. And faithful Kay by his side.
She maintains her perfect posture. Tries to ignore the flies, and the crying of the pigs overhead.
It is as Merlin said. It will soon be over.
She scans the crowd. Notices some faces she knows. Wealthy merchants, an ambassador from the Byzantines, even a few of the Angle and Saxon lordlings have sent their men in respect, though really they are nothing but spies.
She sees the giant, Maelor Gawr.
And that crow, perched on a gatepost, is that Mo
rgan le Fay?
The king and his retinue approach. The knights stop. A horse neighs and shits, a big steaming pile right there on the ground. The king slides from his horse. Strides to the dais and climbs it. He stands with Guinevere.
‘We have gathered here together…’ the wizard, Merlin, starts.
She barely listens. She nods along at all the right places. She smiles and nods. The king takes her hand. He slips a ring onto her finger. What a strange thing.
‘You may kiss the bride,’ the wizard says.
The king leans in. She kisses him. His lips are dry.
‘My wife,’ he says.
‘My lord.’
He smiles. The crowd erupts in cheers.
The wizard looks at them and nods. The giant, Maelor Gawr, strides up and lifts his giant blade. He strikes. The blade slices cleanly through the bellies of the pigs.
A rain of blood falls down on the king and queen. The blood is hot. It stains their clothes and stings their eyes and runs into their hair. The blood is everywhere.
The crowd cheers. Guinevere grabs the back of Arthur’s head and kisses him hard on the mouth. His lips are hot, now. They taste of pigs’ blood. She sticks her tongue in his mouth. The crowd goes wild.
And all this while she’s thinking of another.
So it is done, and they are well and truly married.
Down in Love Alley, she knows, they are offering bridal maids dressed up to best resemble her, and for those with different tastes there are young men to look like Arthur. There’ll be fucking and drinking and singing all night across town, and now she’s tripping balls on mushrooms, and the sky clouds over and the clouds resemble a face.
From afar, forlorn, comes her worm’s cry: I love you…
Stay hidden, she tells it. Stay safe.
The king takes her hand in his. Together they walk through the crowd. Kay and Lancelot follow behind.
She turns her head only once. Lancelot’s there, his face as impassive as always.
But it’s all in the eyes.
The king and his queen enter the castle. They go to their chambers.
And that’s that.
Outside, the first corpse of the day rolls in the gutter, stabbed in the back, and the party carries on unabated.
PART TEN
THE GOLDEN AGE
57
Now come the good times.
Welcome to the Golden Age.
The Six Kings are dead and most of the land is united under the banner of the dragon. Britain has but one ruler, and his name is Arthur. He had nothing but his balls and his sword, they say, and he took those and he made himself a kingdom. His enemies are dead. He built a city. He built himself a throne, and it is his, and his by force alone.
Welcome… to Camelot.
Camelot! The very name sends a shiver down the spine. It seduces. It whispers sweet nothings. And boys and girls all across the land, in villages and shacks, in fields and by rivers, sitting at night by a fire and letting the fire set their dreams aflame, feel its irresistible pull.
A whisper and a promise, and it draws them all, the beautiful girls and the beautiful boys, like a flock of colourful butterflies to their doom.
To Camelot!
Where the parties are bigger and the music louder and the bodies looser and the drink stronger. Where it rains gold, or so they say, and magic blooms as common as red fairy mushrooms by the side of the road.
It is in Camelot where one may run into the famed knight, Lancelot, simply walking down the street or, jumping over a puddle, see through a window in an alleyway the contours of the famed enchantress, Morgan le Fay. It is whispered that the cats in this city are but shape-shifters donning a disguise as one would put on a suit of new clothes. Where the queen, Guinevere, it is said, still picks the pockets of unsuspecting visitors.
Perhaps you’d never visited Gaul, and you’d never seen Rome. But this here town’s got everything those continental places have, and more.
It is a seat of power, and the fae, it’s whispered, congregate here, for power is to them what rotten fruit is to a bee. It is an irresistible delight.
All roads lead to Camelot, and anyone who’s anyone is there, with Merlin the wizard brooding in his tall tower of magic to the north of the castle, and Sir Kay working nightly in the Gilded Cage of which it is whispered even in foreign shores…
Camelot is where the king sits on his throne.
Camelot is where the Knights of his Round Table joust and spar, where they live and sleep in barracks, where they drink and fuck and fight before heading out to all four corners of this island on the king’s business.
And it is here that, one autumn day with the leaves just turning, a boy named Galahad comes to seek his fortune.
*
He is a boy like thousands of other boys, with big dreams and empty heads and even emptier pockets.
As soon as he was old enough to till a field and plough and hoe, he knew he had to get out from that dismal little hamlet where he lived. He slept under the stars more often than not. He ate whatever grew. He rose with the sun and the cockerels, and he broke his back and ate his muck and he drank, but seldom had enough to get drunk.
So one day he stole his mother’s gold ring that she hid in the secret place she thought only she knew. And he stole the neighbours’ stash of old denarii that they hid from the tax collectors. And finally he stole a half-dead horse.
He rode away under the moonlight, and in the distance he could see the fairy paths, shining white, and ghostly knights upon their horses marching down them to the place where all must go. But he took the King’s Road, which runs straight and true, and he followed it all the way to Camelot.
Oh, he was robbed along the way, make no mistake. He had his face bashed in and his coins nicked along with his horse, but he kept his mother’s ring in a safe place where it hurt, and he has it still. He walked the rest of the way, and begged and stole and turned a trick or two, but finally…
Finally he’s here.
He stands by the gates of that great city and looks in awe upon its fortified walls, its towering buildings, its gaily decorated banners, its impeccably armoured guards and the foot and cart traffic going in and out along the King’s Road. How smartly they are all dressed! The women all stunning in the reds and greens of the season, the men in their finest garb and with their hair all black and shiny, and little boys darting here and there to scoop the steaming piles of shit the horses leave behind, so that the approach to the city is always clean and without reproach.
And Galahad wants to throw open his arms and engulf the whole city, to embrace it to his bosom. And he is hungry, not just from the long road and his severe lack of funds, but from desire. He wants to bite into the city, he wants to eat it whole.
And so he takes a step, and then another and another; until he is past the guards and through the gates; and he takes his first step within Camelot.
‘Get out of the way, you fucking mongrel!’
A cart swerves past him, the driver screaming as he waves a giant fist. Galahad sticks up his fingers at the man, shouts ‘Fuck you!’ and runs past and ducks into an alley. He steals an apple from a nearby stall and wends his way deeper into the city, juice dripping down his chin. A scantily clad lady on the corner holds a giant snake draped over her muscled shoulders. She winks at him.
He passes the public baths and the latrines. Down the Via Mithraea where the hawkers on the doors try to entice him in with offers of the Deeper Mysteries, which give you quite a buzz; along Bear Street where the giant animals are caged before their bloodied fights; into a public square where a garden flourishes and big men walk small dogs while all the while eyeing each other.
He sees a thousand new things: men dressed like women and women carrying swords, an entertainer pulling coloured handkerchiefs out of his nostrils, a dog who can bark yes and no in answer to the spectators’ questions, a peacock, and some sort of fruit called figs, a legless man sitting on the shoulders of a bli
nd one, and in one dusty street filled with nervous old men he finds a thing he never saw before: a book. Here on the Via Codices work scribes, who use the tanned hides of beasts or baked earth tablets or thin sheets of wetland plants to make inscriptions on them. They are filled with words he cannot read. And in the back of that makeshift market, behind a stall set in the rear, he sees another form they take.
He stands and stares, transfixed. He’d never seen a thing like this before, had not imagined such a thing existed! For there, replicated on clay or in ink, are women – in the nude.
He stares at breasts: big, small, rounded, slender, side set, asymmetrical. He stares at vulvas, bottoms, thighs, and finally at faces. They’re haughty, proud, shy, nervous, filled with promise. The eyes are captured with such grace.
The women pose. And there are men, too, on these clay urns and these papyri. Men engage in congress with the women; women with women; men with men. Some depict more fantastic scenes. A satyr with a full erection. A minotaur fucking a knight from behind.
Galahad blushes. Galahad hardens.
‘Hey buddy, if you use it you pay for it!’
‘I didn’t mean…’
‘I know just what you meant, you little pervert. Show me coin or show me the back of you and scram. This here’s high-class erotica, it’s primo stuff.’
‘But how?’ Galahad says. ‘How is it done?’
The seller mellows. ‘You’re one of them punters into the practical aspects of the trade? Well, the bosses have a team of scribes and artists and suchlike here in the city, to duplicate the stuff. It’s sold by weight. This here’s the future of the art of the pornographos. You get your low-cost copies for the masses, and high-end stuff for them what live above. Bespoke, like. The art has its aficionados. You dig?’
He cannot understand half of the man’s words, but Galahad is taken.
‘But what’s it drawn from?’ he says, and the man smirks.
‘From life, what else?’
‘How is that possible?’