Here Lies Arthur, Page 3

  “Do it slowly, gracefully,” Myrddin had told me. But when I tore the oilcloth wrapping from the sword it almost floated free, so I had to snatch it down and stuff it between my knees and poke the sword up with my spare hand. I felt it break the surface. My hand, out in the air, felt even colder than the rest of me. The sword was too heavy. I could feel it wobbling. My fingers were so numb that I knew I couldn’t keep a grip much longer on the wet hilt. Why didn’t he take it from me? Bubbles seeped from the corners of my mouth. Why didn’t he take it?

  He took it. I snatched my empty hand back into the world of fishes and used it to clinch my nose shut, holding the air inside me until I had swum back under the plunge of the fall, where I could surface again. I gulped down a mix of air and water and scrambled to the rock shelf, not a bit like a fish or an otter or any other water-thing, but frantic and graceless. I was too cold to care if anyone saw me or not as I climbed up into my hiding place. But when I looked back through the falling water, they were all watching Arthur slosh ashore, holding Caliburn high over his head so that it burned with sun-fire. Some waved their arms; some ran about. Their mouths wide open in their beardy faces, shouting things I couldn’t hear.

  I found my clothes and crawled into them, and felt no warmer. I lay down on the damp stone behind the waterfall and hugged myself and shuddered, and my teeth rattled, rattled, rattled.

  VII

  I must have fallen into a shivering sort of a sleep. When I woke, the light beyond the waterfall was almost gone, and someone was pushing towards me along the hidden track among the ferns.

  A voice called softly, “Girl?”

  I’d not thought to see Myrddin again. Why would he even remember me, now I’d served my purpose? Yet here he was. He must have thought of further uses for me.

  “I’m sorry to leave you cold here, and such a time! You played your part well. You should hear the stories they’re already telling, our men and the Irishman’s. How the lady beneath the lake gave Arthur a magic sword… That hand rising out of the water… If I’d not known better, even I might have thought… For a moment there, with that sword shining against the shadow of the rocks… Even Arthur believes it! He’s used to my tricks, but he really thinks I conjured up the lady of the waters for him… ”

  I wondered sleepily how anyone could have been fooled by my dirty, trembling hand, holding up a sword too heavy for it. I did not know then that men see whatever you tell them to see.

  He wrapped me up in his cloak and carried me gently back along that precarious path to the shore, where his horse was waiting. Unused to gentleness, I let myself relax. By the time he heaved up me up on to the horse’s back I was half asleep again. He rode with me along the forest track, holding me in front of him like baggage. By the time I woke we were passing the burned timbers of my home and starting uphill towards the fort Arthur had captured the night before. The huts that had ringed it were gone. Only their black bones remained, dribbling ghosts of smoke into the twilight. The gate was smashed open. Strangers stood on the walls. The church and the house where the monks had lived were burned and broken too, and the stones were cracked and crumbly from the fire. Dead men lay about. Outside Ban’s hall the dragon banner blew, dark against the bat-flicked sky. Shouting came from the open door, and laughter. Myrddin dismounted and boys ran to take his horse. They didn’t notice me as he lifted me down. Bundled up as I was, I suppose they thought I was a bag or a blanket.

  He carried me in his arms along the side of the hall. It was a long building, with stone walls that tapered at each end and a steep thatch towering above. I could hear sounds like the roaring of wild animals from inside, where Arthur and his men were celebrating their victory and sharing out Ban’s treasure and his women.

  At the end of the building a narrow doorway led into a honeycomb of small rooms. There in the half-dark Myrddin dumped me on soft bedding and left me, tugging a curtain closed across the doorway as he went out. Through a high, tiny window the first stars showed. Firelight shone in around the edges of the curtain. I sat up and looked about me. Straw scrunched inside the plump mattress as I shifted. This must have been Ban’s wife’s room till last night, and some of her fine things were still in it, though they’d been tumbled and overturned as if a storm-wind had swept through the place.

  A puddle of light showed on the floor near the doorway. I crept to it, and found a mirror of polished bronze. My own eyes blinked up at me, like a spirit looking out of a pool. I’d never looked in a mirror before. I saw a flat, round face, a stubby nose. My hair, which was normally the hopeless brown of winter bracken, hung in draggles, black with lake-water. I was a nothing sort of girl, no sooner glimpsed than forgotten. Why would Myrddin care what became of me? Maybe he planned to kill me, seeing as I was the only one who knew the secret of the sword from the water…

  I started to think of escaping, but just then shadows moved across the spill of light beneath the curtain and I heard a man’s voice quite clear outside, saying angrily, “You brought her here?”

  I threw myself back on to the bed and pretended to be asleep. With eyes half shut I saw the curtain drawn open, then quickly closed again when the two men were inside. The newcomer was the man called Cei. He carried an oil lamp. He knelt beside me, but Myrddin stayed near the doorway.

  “So this is the truth behind your trick,” Cei said. I saw his ugly face in the lamplight turn to Myrddin.

  “A good trick, too,” said Myrddin. “Even you might have believed it if you’d not seen the sword and the girl before.

  Cei still looked angry. He stared at me as if I was a wild cat that Myrddin had smuggled in. “Myrddin, Arthur himself believed what happened at the river! He is out there now, telling anyone who’ll listen about how he saw the lake-woman. If he learns it was this child he’ll kill you. If the Irishman finds out…”

  “Then we must make sure that Arthur and the Irishman don’t find out,” said Myrddin. “But I must do something with her. I won’t smother the girl like a kitten. She served us well.”

  Cei gave a shrug. I heard his armour creak. He said, “Then let her loose somewhere. She’s nothing. Even if she does tell, no one will believe her.”

  “She deserves better than that,” said Myrddin firmly. “After what she did for us? Our lady of the lake? You’ve seen the way the Irishman and his friends look at Arthur; as if he’s half a god himself.”

  “So what do you mean to do with her?”

  “I’ll keep her by me. She’ll be a useful servant.”

  “And men will say, ‘The trickster Myrddin has taken a girl-child as apprentice,’ and they will remember that white hand rising from the lake and the long swirl of hair and sooner or later the brighter of them will put one thing beside another and work out that today’s spectacle was just another trick. And you will be finished, and Arthur too, maybe.”

  “Then what if she was not a girl?” asked Myrddin, and turned to look at me. I don’t think he’d been fooled for an instant by my play of being asleep. “What do you say, child? How would you like the great Myrddin to transform you into a boy?”

  I sat up and stared at him. I thought he was about to change me by magic, like he had the Bear’s father. But that had been just a story, hadn’t it?

  He came closer and took the lamp from Cei and held it so the light shone on me. “Look. There’s nothing girlish about that face. And no shortage of dead men’s cast-offs to clothe her in. With her hair shorn and leggings and a tunic on she’d look like just another of the boys who hang round Arthur. She needn’t even change her name, much. Gwyn will do.”

  “What do you say, child?” asked Cei.

  Well, what would you say? Better a boy than a frog, or a stone-cold corpse. That’s what I reckoned.

  “Of course,” said Cei, glancing up at Myrddin, “when a few more summers have passed there’ll be no mistaking her for anything but a maiden.”

  Myrddin waved his words away like midges. He liked the thought of pulling this new trick. Outwitting
everybody with his foxy cleverness. He said, “When a few more summers have passed, Cei, the story of the sword from the lake will be rooted so deep that nothing will blow it down, and then young Gwyn can become Gwyna again. Or maybe by then your brother will have outrun his luck and led us all into our graves, or your Christian god will have returned in glory and declared his paradise. So don’t lurk there fretting like an old woman. Go and find clothes for my boy here.”

  Cei left, grumbling that he did not care for being ordered off on errands by a godless mountebank, but I guessed he did not mean it. The way he and Myrddin threw insults at each other told me they were old friends. When he was gone Myrddin said, “He’s a good man, Cei. Arthur’s half-brother. But he hasn’t Arthur’s ambition. Old Uthr’s blood doesn’t burn so fierce in his veins. A follower, not a leader.”

  I didn’t say anything. It wasn’t my place. I listened to the voice of my heart instead. It was busy asking me what it would be like to be a boy. Would I have to fight? Would I have to ride? Would I have to piss standing up? I was sure I couldn’t do any of those things. No one would ever take me for a boy, would they?

  VIII

  But they did. Cei returned with a woollen tunic (oaten-coloured it was, with red borders) and scratchy homespun trousers which hung down to my ankles, bound round my shins with ribbons of soft leather. My shoon were leather, too, the first I’d worn. They made each foot feel like a fish in a trap. Then Myrddin took out a wicked-looking knife and cut my long hair so that it spiked up on end like hedge-pigs’ prickles, and when he had brushed the trimmings from my shoulders I went out with him into the hall.

  It was so full of noise and smoke and men that I could hardly see anything at first. Arthur’s shield-companions were feasting with the Irishman’s warriors, celebrating their new alliance in beer and meat. Wherever I looked some man’s broad back was in my way, and all I could hear was their great bull voices bellowing. But the men drew aside when they saw Myrddin coming, and soon we got near the big fire where one of Ban’s captured cows was roasting. There stood Arthur, with a knife in his hand and grease on his tunic, carving honour-portions for his favourites, slinging their meat to them along with jokes and laughter.

  It was the first time I’d seen him without his helm and fish-scale armour on. He was less like a god than I’d expected. A solid, big-boned man with a thick neck and a fleshy face. His cropped, black hair was thinning at the front, and his scalp shone with sweat in the firelight. His eyes were small and dark, set deep, and they had a sleepy look, but they could become sly and thoughtful all of a sudden, or twinkle with merriment like a boy’s. I guessed they might narrow easily with rage. A dangerous man, I thought. A bear of a man.

  “Myrddin!” he shouted, seeing my master through the smoke and waving the meat-knife at him. “Where have you been? Get out your harp. Give us the story of our victory!”

  Myrddin grinned at him, and said, “A good story is like good mead, or good beer. It needs to brew a while.”

  Men turned to look, and some shouted “Myrddin!” too, and gestured with cups, or hunks of meat, or upraised hands. I watched the way they looked at Myrddin, and I guessed that he was someone they joked about when his back was turned, but someone they feared too. After all, had he not called up the spirits of the waters that very afternoon?

  “What’s this?” asked Arthur, pointing at me with his knife. “You have a son, and never told us?” Laughter from the men about. Arthur laughed too, and shouted above the noise of the others, “Let’s pray he doesn’t take after his granddad!”

  Myrddin claimed to be the son of a bard, but there was another story, too: that his mother was a nun and his father the Devil himself. I didn’t know that then, mind. I thought all their rough laughter was at me. It battered me backwards like a storm of wind till I was pressed against my master’s robes.

  Myrddin laid a hand on my shoulder. “Gwyn’s a kinsman of mine, come to be my servant. He travelled with me from Din Tagyll. Can’t I have someone to fetch and carry for me just as you fighters do?”

  Arthur’s bright eyes were on me, spilling tears of laughter at his own joke. I thought he was sure to see the truth about me, and I felt myself shrink and blush, waiting for him to bellow, “That’s no boy.” But I was only a servant. Why would Arthur waste a thought on me? After a moment one of the Irishman’s captains said in his moss-thick moorland accent, “This is Myrddin? The enchanter?”

  Arthur turned to him, and I was forgotten. “The greatest enchanter of the island of Britain. Did I not see her face myself when she gave me this sword? The lake-woman. He called her up. Summoned her like I summon a servant-girl. What a face! Beautiful she was! And a swirl of golden hair, like…”

  Words failed Arthur. He moved his hands around, sketching a swirl of white-gold hair in the smoke. His listeners were entranced. How could anyone doubt his story? Myrddin might lie to them, but Arthur was an open man; like him or not, you could see the truth shining out of his big face. “Naked she was, down under the water, and white as doves’ down… ”

  A knot of men closed round him, and round Myrddin who stood beside him. They shut me out. A wall of backs. Thick belts and hanging swords. I turned away, and the talk of other men washed over me, full of unknown names, coarse laughter, talk of dead enemies and stolen women. I pushed among their tree-trunk legs, invisible to them as the dogs that truffled for scraps in the rushes on the floor. Then a hand touched mine, and I turned to find a face on a level with my own.

  I started back, stepping on one of the dogs, which yelped and growled low. For a moment I’d thought the boy I was facing was the same one I’d met in the woods, the red-haired, angry one with the fallen horse. But when I looked closer I saw that this one was younger, closer to my own age, and grinning.

  “I’m Bedwyr,” he said. “My uncle Cei told me you’re in need of a friend.”

  I nodded nervously, glad of Cei’s kindness, yet fearful in case this lad could see through my disguise more easily than full-grown men.

  “Come on,” he said, “I’ll take you to the horse-lines.”

  “Why?”

  “So we can see that our masters’ horses are safe for the night,” he replied, still friendly, but looking surprised at how little I knew. “You are new to Myrddin’s service, then? But you’ll know how to groom a horse…”

  I nodded again, but I didn’t know. I knew that food went in at one end and dung came out the other, but that was all my knowledge of the tribe of horses. “I come from over the water,” I told him. “From Armorica, that people call the Lesser Britain. My father was rich, and we had servants to do everything for us. But everyone was killed by Saxon pirates last spring, and now I am just a servant.”

  I don’t know where the words came from. They seemed to have been waiting inside my head for a time when I would need them. I remember wondering if I would be struck dumb or dead or mad for telling such appalling lies. I remember thinking that Bedwyr was sure to know that I was lying. But I survived, and Bedwyr didn’t question me. He felt sorry for me, and his eyes filled with tears. He hugged me in a brotherly, bearish way he’d copied from the fighting men and said, “How you must hate the Saxons. I hate them too. I’ll kill hundreds and hundreds of them when I’m older, and a warrior like my brother.”

  He pulled me past a knot of men and pointed through the greasy smoke at where the lad who’d nearly killed me in the woods was stood, laughing too loud at some older man’s joke. “That’s my brother Medrawt,” he said. “Our mother’s Cei’s sister, Arthur’s half-sister. Medrawt will lead a war-band for Arthur one day. Me too, God willing. For now I’m Medrawt’s man, in charge of his horse and his weapons. Medrawt fought in the battle last night, and killed a dozen of Ban’s men.”

  I guessed I wasn’t the only person who had been spinning tales about himself, but I looked astonished and impressed, which was what Bedwyr seemed to expect of me. Now that I could see them both I realized they weren’t that alike, except they had the same red
gold hair and the same pale skin. Bedwyr was stocky and freckled and he had a friendly, laughing face, but Medrawt had the look of someone who’d grown fast and lately, and still wasn’t sure how to move inside his tall new body.

  Bedwyr hugged me again. I tried not to shrink from his touch. I wasn’t used to being touched, except by my old master’s boot or the flat of his wife’s hand. “We’ll avenge them,” Bedwyr said. He thought I was still moping about the poor murdered family I’d just invented. “Next summer,” he said, “we’ll ride side-by-side and wash our swords in Saxon blood! We’ll be brothers, Gwyn.”

  “Brothers,” I agreed, and wondered what he’d do when he found out I was more suited to be a sister. I trailed after him out the big door at the hall’s end, trying not to walk too oddly in those odd, uncomfortable clothes. I didn’t think I wanted to ride with a war-band, or wash my sword in anybody’s blood, but I was glad of Bedwyr all the same.

  Outside there was ice on the puddles and the sky was enormous with stars. The sentries talked softly on the walls. Frost made a fuzz of white fur on the helmets and shields piled up outside the hall. We passed a thicket of spears set butt-downward in the earth, where the heads of Lord Ban and his men had been spiked. I suppose it should have grieved me to see my own lord brought down like that, and the houses of his shield-companions roofless and his hall in the hands of Arthur’s gang. But I didn’t feel anything, except my leggings chafing and my new shoes nipping my toes. I followed my brother Bedwyr downhill in the dark to the horse-lines.