Here Lies Arthur (4 page)

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 redgold 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.

IX

 

On the whole, I preferred being a boy. The things boys do – even the chores – are better fun than women’s work. Even the clothes are easier, once you grow used to them.

There’s more to being a boy than wearing trews and cutting off your hair, of course, and don’t let anyone tell you different. There’s ways of moving and ways of standing still you have to learn. There’s a way of looking at things as if you don’t care about them, even when you care about them a lot. There are grunts that mean more than words. Boys have all sorts of rules among themselves, just like dogs. Rules about who leads and who follows. They don’t talk about them, they just seem to be born knowing these things. I had to pick them up as best I could, by watching Bedwyr and the others.

There were about two score boys in Arthur’s band, acting as servants and grooms, learning the ways of war from the older men. They sensed there was something different about me, right from the start, but I think they
put it down to me being servant to Myrddin, who wasn’t a soldier like their masters but a poet and maybe a magician. That made them too scared to bully me, which was good. And Bedwyr had decided to be my friend, which was better. Bedwyr wasn’t the oldest or the strongest of the boys, but the rest looked up to him because he was Arthur’s nephew and his brother was already one of Arthur’s warriors. So they accepted me for Bedwyr’s sake. They mocked me when I was too shy to piss beside them and burrowed off into the bushes on my own, but mockery is all part of how boys talk to each other. None of them ever guessed I was a girl. Myrddin was right. People see what they expect to see, and believe what you tell them to believe.

The war-band waited most of a month at Ban’s fort, till the green spears of Easter lilies started jabbing up through the mud at the lane-sides. Then Arthur left the Irishman to hold Ban’s lands in his name and rode away, taking with him a dozen hard warriors the Irishman had pledged to Arthur’s war-band. As well as those men, the Irishman had promised to pay yearly tribute to Arthur: three ingots of tin from the mines in his hills, three loaves as broad as the distance from his elbow to his wrist, a tub of butter three hand’s-breadths across and three deep, and a sow three fingers thick in her hams. It was less than he’d paid when Ban was his overlord. But he was a wily Irishman. As I helped my master mount his horse in the shadow of the gate I heard Arthur grumbling that he’d never see any of that tribute.

Myrddin said calmly, “It doesn’t matter. At least the
Irishman won’t move against you. That leaves you safe to turn your eyes east to the lowlands, where men will pay you taxes in gold, not butter, if they think you can keep trouble from their door.”

Arthur looked sideways at him, thoughtful. He wasn’t a clever man, Arthur, but he was clever enough to trust my master’s judgement.

We rode downhill and turned east on the river-road, and the bare green branches of the woods soon hid the fort and the hill it stood upon. Two standard-bearers went in front, carrying Arthur’s banners: the red dragon of Britain, like a long red sock with the foot cut out, and his own flag, a flat square stitched with the symbol of a sword thrust through a stone. Behind them rode Arthur, and his captains, and his sixty warriors, gorgeous in their red cloaks on their ghost-white horses. We boys followed, with pack-horses and spare mounts. By noon I was further from home than I had ever been, yet still we kept going. Britain was bigger than I’d thought.

Days went by. I got used to seeing the world from horseback. I rode a pony called Dewi that had been taken as plunder from Ban’s pastures. Arthur had given him to Myrddin, and Myrddin gave him to me. The first time I got up on his back I fell straight off the other side into a dung-puddle and the delighted crowing laughter of the other boys. But I learned fast. Second time I stayed up, swaying, and Bedwyr showed me pityingly how to grip the reins, how to tug Dewi’s head round to steer him, how to control him with the pressure of my knees and heels against his hairy flanks.

Strange, it seemed, to think I owned something so big
and beautiful and alive as Dewi. He was white with a hint of grey-blue dapple at his hind-end, strong in the leg and well muscled. I got to love the way his mane tufted, wood-smoke colour, and how he would put his big head down to nuzzle me when I was trying to bridle him. The squared ridge of his long nose, hard as a shield. His steady walk, the quiet power of him. Sat on Dewi’s back, I felt like one of those creatures they have in Greece that Myrddin told us of one time; half man, half horse. I’d look down from his saddle at common people who could only stand and watch as Arthur’s band went by. Now and then I’d catch sight of some little dirty girl-child with scabs on her knees and think, wondering-like, “That’s what I was, till master changed me.”

But though I knew it was true, it grew harder and harder to believe it. My new life was so different that the old felt like it had never been at all. Even I was coming to think of myself as a boy.

We rode through a land that was a patchwork of small powers. Strong men had hacked territories for themselves out of the carcass of old Britannia, and then they had had sons, and their sons had had sons, and each son had taken a portion of his father’s holding till what remained were countless tiny kingdoms. Some were combined under the heel of a single overlord, Maelwas of Dumnonia in the south, or Cunomorus of Kernyw in the far west, or the kings of Gwent and Calchvynydd northward. But among the smaller kingdoms, and in the borderlands, a man might still forge territory of his own.

The country we travelled that spring wasn’t exactly Arthur’s, but the men it did belong to weren’t strong enough to argue when he came riding up to their holdings with his band behind him and my master Myrddin at his side, shouting out words as fine as banners: “Make way for the
Imperator
Artorius! Make way for the
Dux Bellorum
of the island of Britain! Great Arthur will protect you from the Saxons!”

In truth, the Saxons had been beaten so soundly by old Ambrosius that they’d kept meekly to their lands in the east ever since, and the few small war-bands who came raiding over their border sometimes had never reached this far west. But if anyone dared voice that thought Myrddin would scowl like an owl and say, “Are your memories so short in this country? Don’t you remember the terrors of the Saxons’ war? The houses and churches on fire? Women and children snatched away as slaves? Bodies strewn in the streets, red with blood, as if they’d been crushed in a wine-press? It was men like Arthur who protected us then. And it’s Arthur who will protect us again, when the Saxons return. Why, it’s only the fear of Arthur that keeps them from swarming west and murdering you all! What do you think will happen to your homes and your children if you don’t give Arthur the little he asks, to keep his brave fighters fed and clothed and mounted?”

I think Myrddin really believed what he said about those Saxons. You could see his fear for Britain’s future in his eyes when he spoke of them. You could hear it in his voice. But I don’t know what Arthur thought. Sometimes it seemed to me those Saxons were just a
threat he used to make men part with their belongings. He would sit on his white horse while my master made his earnest speeches, and the people would look at him, and at his gang behind him, and go scurrying to bring him tribute and offer us shelter in their houses and food for ourselves and our hungry horses.

Once we ran up against a rival war-band, led by another man who also called himself
Dux Bellorum,
and there was a battle at a ford. I didn’t see it, for I was back with the wagons. I heard the noise of it roaring and crashing like a far-off storm, and once the shrill screaming of a wounded horse. I couldn’t understand what it was at first, but Bedwyr tensed like a hound that hears the hunt go by. When we crossed that ford later there were dead men in the water either side, leaking long ribbons of blood downstream.

Medrawt killed a man in that fight. It filled him with a shaky sort of laughter. He came and hugged Bedwyr and promised him a share of the stuff he’d taken from his dead enemy. I’d never seen him show kindness to his younger brother before. He was so conscious of being a man that he barely let himself look at us mere boys, except when he was barking at Bedwyr to clean his gear or tend to his horse or find him something more to eat. But Bedwyr loved him, and when I watched them laughing together I could see why.

“This is my friend Gwyn,” said Bedwyr, tugging Medrawt towards me. “Gwyn’s Myrddin’s man. We’re brothers in arms.”

“Gwyn,” said Medrawt vaguely, looking me up and down. Just for a moment I saw a little shadow of
confusion pass across his face, as if he recognized me but could not remember why. Then it was gone. I was just a boy, and his brother’s friend, and his blooding had put him in such a good temper that he threw me an iron bracelet he’d taken from the dead man’s wrist.

Arthur hung the head of the rival
dux
from his saddle-girth till the stink and the flies grew too much. Then he lobbed it into a pool beside the road. I don’t think he meant anything by it, except to be rid of the thing, but it pleased the war-band. They took it for a tribute to the old gods.

I’d learned, by then, the ways of all the different gods and spirits who watched over Arthur’s band. Outwardly, most of the men were Christians, and their shields carried that red
to show it. Crosses and tin medallions with Christ’s alpha and omega sign jangled round their necks, in the hope that God would notice, and turn away the blades of enemies in battle. Some were earnest. Cei prayed every night, and looked sour and disapproving when Arthur threw that head into the water. But most were wary of the old gods too. You can’t live in this land of mists and rivers and not know they’re there: the lake-lady in her waters, the small gods of trees and stones. The new god has hushed and shrunk them, but he can’t quite drive them away. And some of the band, like red-haired Gwri and his men from the wild uplands of Gwynedd, scoffed at Christ, who seemed weak and womanish compared to their own god, Nudd, the hunter.

And Myrddin? He had no gods. His head was full of
tales of magic and wonders, but in his heart he didn’t believe any of them. He told me once, “There are no gods, Gwyn. No ghosts, no spirits. Nothing but our own fears and hopes. Gods are tales for children. They’re tricks we play upon ourselves, to make it seem there’s some sense in our lives.”

“But you must believe in something,” I told him, staring at all the charms and talismans that hung round his neck.

He laughed. “These? They’re just for show. Simple people see them, and think I’m closer to the gods than other men. Men I meet on the road are afraid to rob me. But believe? I suppose some hand must have set this world moving. But I don’t believe any god is watching over me, ready to help me if I make the right sacrifices and stamp me flat if I don’t. It’s a freedom, not believing. It gives me the power to look clear and hard at what other men believe, and use it to steer them.”

Well, I’d seen the truth of that, hadn’t I? But I didn’t think it’d suit me, that sort of freedom. It seemed to me that going through the world without a god would be like going through midwinter snow without a cloak. I went on saying my prayers to Christ and his saints, and if they didn’t answer them I’d sometimes try the old gods, too. I kept it to myself, though. It pleased my master to think he’d turned me to his own cold way of thinking.

“And Arthur?” I wondered once. “What does he believe?”

“Arthur’s different. He believes in gods, both the old and the new. He welcomes their help when it comes. But
he won’t grovel for it. He thinks he’s their equal, and better than most of them.”

The roads led us at last to the old legion fortress that was Arthur’s base. A rampart high as the highest tree, and a wall upon the rampart, and a palisade upon the wall, and a tall gate with watchtowers. It held me spellbound as we rode up to it. How could men have built anything so
big?

Inside the walls were scores of huts and some bigger, boat-shaped buildings hunched around a feast-hall. A smell of cooking fires, and animals wandering about the houses. Some of the men had women and families there. Cei’s wife was a squat, cheerful, barrel-shaped woman, who had given him a daughter, Celemon. It was strange to see his hard face soften as he picked the girl up and swung her round him. Arthur had a wife, too: Cunaide, red-haired and beautiful as summer. I remember staring at all the gold she wore. She didn’t look so very much older than me.

I expected my master would have a wife, or a woman, or at least a home, but he had nothing. While we stayed there we slept as we had slept on the road, bundled up in blankets at Arthur’s fireside. Turned out Myrddin owned nothing but the things he carried bagged on the saddles of his horse and my pony. “I like to travel lightly through the world,” he told me, when he saw my disappointment. “If you have nothing, no man can take it away from you.”