Here Lies Arthur (3 page)

VI

 

He left the horse tethered there, and hustled me away through the woods. All he took with him was the sword, bundled in its roll of cloth. The air was growing cold. Myrddin nodded and said, “There will be a mist upon the water.”

How could he know such a thing? What demons told him so?

“You’ll be wondering how I came into Arthur’s service, I suppose?” he asked, striding ahead of me through the thickets.

I’d been wondering no such thing. It was no place of mine to wonder about his life. But I knew that he was going to tell me all the same. I sensed he was nervous, and that talking for him was a way of keeping fear at bay.

“It’s a good story,” he promised, talking at me over his shoulder as he went stalking through the wood. His breath fumed in the cold air, wreathing him in smoke. “You should hear how the men tell it round their
campfires. They say I worked for Arthur’s father, that old villain Uthr, who was captain of Ambrosius’s cavalry. It seems this Uthr had an eye for the girls, and one spring it lighted on one called Ygerna, that was wife to some small lord down in Kernyw. Lust lit up his brain like a gorse-fire. You could see the smoke pouring out of his ears. But what to do? Ygerna’s husband was jealous. Kept her penned in his fort and let no man come near her.

“So Uthr called on me, and on my powers. One night, when his rival was off raiding some neighbours’ cattle-runs, I transformed Uthr by magic into his image, and he slipped into the fort and into Ygerna’s bed without anyone guessing. And the child conceived that night was Arthur, and his victories outshine old Uthr’s as the sun outshines the moon.”

Shoving my way through dead bracken at the magician’s heels, listening to all of this, I wished I could just make a run for it, and take my chances with whatever wild beasts and wicked spirits lived in this maze of trees. Running had always served me well before. But running from Myrddin would be different, wouldn’t it? If he had the power to transform one man into the likeness of another, then he could surely catch me and transform me into anything he chose. A frog. A toad. A stone.

“Of course, it’s all nonsense,” Myrddin said. “You’ll have to learn that, Gwyna. Just because someone tells a story doesn’t mean it’s true. I have no magic powers. I’m just a traveller who has picked up a few handy conjuring tricks along the road.”

“Then how did you change Uthr into another man?” I asked.

“That’s what I’m telling you, girl. It never happened. Old Uthr took that fort by force, and carried off Ygerna along with all his other trophies. Probably tired of her within a week. There’s no difference between Arthur and any other of Uthr’s landless bastards, except that Arthur has me to spin stories like that one about him. You see, Gwyna, men do love a story. That’s what we’re going to give them this morning, you and I. A story they’ll remember all their lives, and tell to their children and their children’s children until the whole world knows how Arthur came by the sword of the otherworld. And here we are!”

We had reached the pool. Late afternoon sun lit the oak-tops on the far shore, but the water lay in shadow, and a faint silver breath of mist hung above it, just as Myrddin had promised.

How had he known? He had just said he could not work magic, but how else could he have seen into the future?

A horn sounded, away downriver. Myrddin hurried me along the shore. We pushed through undergrowth. The armoured leaves of a holly-tree scratched my face. A narrow ledge of rock led to the waterfall. Ferns grew thickly here. The spray rattled on their leaves. Fleshy and pointed they were, like green tongues. Among them, almost hidden, I saw a faint path snaking in behind the water’s white curtain.

Myrddin turned and put the swaddled weight of the sword into my hands. Then he took me by both
shoulders and stooped to stare into my face. Dark as good rich earth, his eyes were, and a quick to-and-fro flicker in them like the dancing of candle-flames as he watched me, searching, expectant.

“They are coming. I’ll tell you what you must do, little fish, and you must listen well.”

The sun crept west, and the tree-shadows shifted on the far shore. I crouched alone on the damp, narrow shelf behind the waterfall. The shout of falling water filled my head, but the spray barely touched me. It was a magic place. From a few paces away I must be invisible, yet I could look out through the water-curtain and see Myrddin quite clearly as he paced about in the sunlight on the eastern shore.

His face turned suddenly in my direction. He was too far off for me to make out his features, but I guessed it was a warning look. I looked at the trees behind him, and after a moment I saw light on metal, and the shapes of men on horses. They came out of the woods in a line, wary. Round white shields with the symbol of Christ on them,
, in red. Arthur’s men. I looked for the sandy-haired one called Cei who had come to Myrddin earlier, but I could not tell which was him. The riders had their helmets on, and most rode white horses, and all wore red cloaks.

I knew Arthur when I saw him though. A red horsetail fluttered from his helmet, and between the cheek-guards his teeth flashed in a white grin as he urged his horse down the shingle into the shallows. He was talking to Myrddin, but I could not hear their voices.
Then someone pointed across the pool towards the western side. More riders were coming down through the trees on the steep hillside there, and men on foot ran lightly between them. Spears and hunting bows. A big man with a black beard riding ahead of the rest. He stopped, and his men with him. They looked at Arthur’s band. Some waved their weapons and shouted. Insults, I suppose, now I think back. Men stand taunting each other for hours sometimes before a fight begins.

But there was to be no fight. Myrddin was holding up his arms, shouting something back over the water. He swept his hand across the pool, reminding the Irishman’s men that this was a magic place, a gateway to the otherworld. Telling them that that was why Arthur had come here, to pay his respects to their gods.

Now Arthur was dismounting, handing the reins of his horse to a boy who came running forward to take them. I could see men on both shores looking at each other in surprise as Arthur walked into the pool.

I said little prayers under my breath as I slipped off my old wool dress and wadded it into a crack of the rock behind me. I gripped the sword Caliburn in its oilcloth wrapper and took deep breaths. I didn’t think I had the courage to do what Myrddin had ordered, but I hadn’t the courage to disobey him, either. The air was cold. The water would be colder. I shuffled on my bottom to the edge of the rock shelf and let myself drop into the whirl of foam under the waterfall.

“They’ll all be watching the Bear,” Myrddin had said.
“Not every day you see a great warlord take a bath in all his gear. Or out of it, for that matter. No one will see you.”

I hoped he was as right about that as he had been about the mist.

I surfaced cautiously under the fall. Water drilled down white all round me. For a moment, confused by the swirling and the noise, I didn’t know which way I was facing. Then I saw Arthur pushing across the pool towards me. He was up to his chest; up to his shoulders. In the middle of the lake he had to half swim, which he did awkwardly, weighed down by his armour, his red cloak spread on the water behind him. Then, as he entered the tongue of rippled, roiling water that spread from the foot of the fall, the pool shallowed again and he rose up standing, waves lapping at his chest. Just as Myrddin had promised me he would.

I ducked under water, as I’d been told to. It was easy to stay down with the weight of the sword in my hands and no clothes to float me up. My bare feet sank into the thick dough of leaf mould on the bottom. I blundered forward with my eyes open, scrambling through the crown of an old drowned tree, slithering in its slimy, rotted bark, stirring up such a tumble of peaty flakes that for a moment I could see nothing at all. And then, close ahead of me, I saw the square gleam of Arthur’s belt-buckle, the tower of his armoured torso. I blinked the grit from my eyes and looked up and saw his head and shoulders high above me, out in the air. For a moment our eyes met. His were wide under the iron
eyebrows of his helmet. Wide and filled with wonder and something that I did not recognize, because never in my life had anyone been afraid of me before. Then my own long hair swirled up over my head and hid him. My lungs were drum skins, and my heart was pounding on them.

“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?