The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) (34 page)

Arthur ignored the duke’s complaints and I had to, as well.  What I could not make in Arthur, Arthur was making in himself.

He came to do everything in a manic fever.  At meal-eating, he was madly fast and methodical, a dripless perfection, his knife licked clean at each bite, the little finger on his left hand always neatly raised and spice-coated.

He read old parchments in Latin and Greek with the speed of two men reading, often two documents at once in different languages, stumbling through references in Hebrew and Persian, skipping from one subject and scroll to another in a fevered anxiety to learn.

He drank down each bottle he was given to put himself instantly drunk to save time.

He slept in a dead stillness that was a fury of its own.

With Phyllis Merlin, he made love in a frenzy from which she spared herself only by abandoning her body to him and drifting in spirit above them to watch the spectacle he made of sex.

The higher education that I, in our forest romps, had not given Arthur to read in boyhood from the Greeks, Egyptians, Persians, and Romans, he read now in Cator’s library.  He read aloud to his bored war band tracts on vegetable-growing, stone-quarrying, the making of writing-brushes.

They took more interest in hearing the bawdy theories of Epicure.  The plays of Euripides and Sophocles.  Arian on Alexander.  Caesar’s war commentaries.  But they cowered behind their chairs when Arthur read Galen’s horror of modern medicine and the frightening moral complexities of Aristotle.

In the duke’s library, Arthur and I received messengers from Bedivere’s four wives in the Duchy of Cornwall, from Kay’s principality, from Percival’s queen-mother, and from Lucan’s city of York.  We read these messages to the war band who were too small to hold the parchments themselves.  On their behalf, we returned their instructions to the messengers gawking in revulsion and puzzlement at Arthur’s gibbering pet apes, astonished that the younger brother of the mighty king of the Britons took counsel with midget monsters.

When Arthur had rebuilt the castle from its bowels to its skin, he turned his sweaty efforts to the duke’s villa-palace and its hovel-like outbuildings.  But Duke Cator cried, “Stay all this!  Make the celebration of my good new sewers before you lay another brick.  I’ll choose between you and Lancelot for Guenevere and marry off the girl before your frenzy of building and Lancelot’s frenzy of slaughter impoverish me in glory.”

“Yes, a grand festival!” Arthur cried.

“No, no, no!” said the duke, horrified to realize Arthur was about to undertake another vast enterprise to threaten the ducal treasury.

Arthur searched Brittany for Greek and Syrian dancers, for Raetian wine to make the drunk, for elephants to walk the tightropes, jugglers and conjurers, Spaniards to acrobat with bulls.  He learned to lead the dance in the Greek style, naked and masked, as Cator had commanded.  He exercised with the Greek and Syrian dancers until dance became for Arthur the same sort of feverish labor as castle-building.

* * *

Afternoon, near eleventh hour, sunset not far off.  I stood with sweaty Arthur and his laborers on the palace-villa’s red tile roof, Arthur gripping work plans, a roll of new-found engineering holy writ stuck behind his ear, his chief dancers pirouetting around him describing new gestures and forms for inclusion in the festival dances.

The mania that had gripped Arthur all these months suddenly went still in him.  He gazed into the sea-mist gathering on the far hills, light thickening over the brown and green land and a river glittering through trees.  He saw there a dirt road, a man leading an ox.  He heard the creak of wheels and thud of hooves.  Peasants in their fields.  Scent of burning wood and spices.  Call of birds.

What was he seeing out there I could not see?

“What do you see there, Arthur?” I said.

I looked with Arthur’s eyes and was startled to see it, too.  Camelot!

The wonderful premonition vanished for us both.

“Why do I feel a free man here in Brittany, Mother?  Why do I hate the idea of returning to my own country when my indenture to Cator is done?”

“Take Brittany with you in Guenevere...

In his new life frenzy, Arthur had taken up Cator’s interrupting habit.  He cut in on me and said, “I love her in my dreams.  How can that happen?”

“She has Cator’s sly blood in her veins...”

“More than that.  In my dreams, she
is
Camelot.  She’ll make me a double duke, of Cornwall and Brittany.  That’s power enough to become king of Britain.  It leads to Orkney and Mordred,” he said, bitter yearning in his voice though the name was grim and awful to me.

“She’ll dowry me an army to destroy Orkney,” he said.  “That’s what I want from her.  I’ll put her in my palace with my son Mordred and found a dynasty for Camelot.  That’s in my dream.”

“You dream of dynasties like a pharaoh?” I said, startled.  Even I in my best old age hadn’t hoped for so much from Arthur.

Just put me within throat-cutting reach of Mordred,
I thought,
so I can preserve your dream for the world!

I felt a sudden shock.  As though dream lightning struck my soul.

I saw Arthur’s peace across the land.  I saw him in his family.  I saw him with his son on his knee.

I felt a surprising and bitter dread in what I had to do, and even more unexpected hope I would not have to do it.

Was hope a symptom of the draining away of my merlinic power?  Or was it the unexpected return to me of the sympathetic human heart I’d ignored all my merlin’s years?

Arthur moved through Cator’s festival celebrating his rebuilt Caerconan castle like a general through an overmatched enemy, shoving slave-troops here and there to haul meat-wine-bread, driving the whores back to their appointed quarters, whipping on the dancing elephants, bribing naked Greeks to leapfrog with King Hoel’s savage bears, slapping sword on shield for attention to the speeches, bards, and musicians, leading cheers and jeers, stamping out fires set in the beds and throwing down straw to hide Cator’s best new mosaic floors from his king-brother’s covetousness.

When hysteria and drunkenness were at their peak and enough of the guests had vomited out their first courses to make room for the next, Cator shouted, “Your dance, Arthur!”

Torches and burnished shields for mirrors threw beams of blue and yellow light onto the platform where Duke Cator kept his high chair.  Arthur and his Greek and Syrian dancers jumped out of the curtains, naked and masked, causing the audience to gasp at Arthur in the lead role of Mercury – painted gold and red, garish and godly, gold wings on his ankles and bangles strung on his groin hairs.

They danced in the stabs of light from the shields, the crowd cheering and howling.

The dance was bizarre and violent, sexy, greedy, drunk and dreamy.  And yet there was an odd tenderness to it, an understanding forgiveness, a nearly Christian charity for the half-barbarians who watched, creating a hot tension within the frolic.

A drunken princess dragged off the stage a beautiful Syrian to pour wine down his throat and beg him for love.  He agreed and the goggling audience turned heads back and forth between that performance and Arthur’s.

At the moment of the dance’s highest power, caught up in the rhythmic magic Arthur had created, half-drunk myself, astonished that my foster-son had the skill and wit to make the dance he had created, heated with pride, I cheered and threw the dancers a dozen bottles of Cator’s best wine in his finest Roman glass, measure for measure more valuable than gold or steel.

Cator shouted in fright for his possessions.  We the audience laughed at his terror.  Drunken warriors howled for glass-smashing as the bottles flickered and sparked in the light, sending out bitter blue and yellow tendrils.

The audience surged around the stage as, one by one in the frenzy of the dance, Arthur urging them on in song, the Greeks and Syrians smashed their bottles, splashing wine into the crowd, and Cator screamed for his loss.

Cator’s lifeguards hauled the dancers off-stage, beating and trampling them, and the dance was finished.

Arthur alone remained with the terrified musicians and the last two samples of finest Roman glass.

He wheeled his arms anti-sun-wise, moving faster and faster, the light reflecting from the bottles he held like sharp-edged bits of broken glass thrown into the eyes of the audience.  Faster, faster, until the audience began to pant with anxiety for him.

The lifeguards made to prod him with their spears but a puzzled Lancelot hauled out his golden war club and shoved them back.

The crowd shouted in its soul’s voice,
Make us your country, Arthur!  We are your war band!

The lights were smothered!  The dance done!

In the black and silent hall, I heard men and women weep in the darkness for the vision of Camelot Arthur had given them.

Lifeguards rattled their spear butts on the floor, anxious for orders.

Cator shouted, “Light!  Light the torches!”

Lancelot stood on stage, confused and gawking around at the crowd cheering Arthur’s name.

He shouted to Cator, “Does he win Guenevere with an obscene dance?”

Lancelot swung his club at Arthur.

Arthur-Mercury danced around each of Lancelot’s swings and thrusts, feints, drives, and hacks, making a ballet of barbarian and civilized man, of violence against hope, until Lancelot was exhausted, streaming sweat, barely able to hold up his war club.

He sucked in air for one more smashing club-fall.  Arthur parried with the bottle in his hand.  The sound of the club on the glass was like steel on stone, like the shattering of an earthquake.

Lancelot’s club broke like splintered glass, its fragments flying toward the audience before the pieces vanished in air.

Lancelot stood there stunned.  “He beat me –
me,
the greatest warrior of the age – wine bottle against war club!  You must be a god, Arthur, or a merlin!”

Lancelot groaned hugely, “Great Lord Jesu, what have I done in fighting this man?”

“The choice is made,” Arthur said to Duke Cator.

“I believe it is,” said Lancelot.

“I say it is!” said Cator.  “Guenevere’s yours, Arthur.”

“Arthur, are we brothers in Camelot?” cried Lancelot.

“He can’t be!” I shouted, remembering the disaster to come in Lancelot’s seduction of Guenevere the Queen.  “He’s not in the
Chronicles,
Arthur.  Leave him out.”

“I’ll follow you to the ends of the flat Earth!” Lancelot said to Arthur.

“Would you,” I said, “or merely to Guenevere’s bed?”

“What are you saying, Mother?” Arthur said.

“To the ends of the Earth, Arthur, and call you a fool all the way for leading me there.  What better friend than that?”

Lancelot threw himself to his knees and put Arthur’s foot on his head.  “My Lord King, I’m your warrior every day of your life in this world and in all worlds that follow!”

Cator kicked Lancelot.  “Don’t call him ‘king,’ you fool, there’s a living king in Britain and he’s a jealous, war-making bastard.”

“Merlin!” cried Cator to me, horror in his face.  “Have you just created your damned ‘King Camelot’ on my territory?”

“I can’t believe it’s happening this way, Duke…”

“How could anything surprise you, you’re a damn merlin?”

“Arthur’s making the new world, one I lived but can barely remember...”

“Stop him, stop him!” shouted Cator in a fury of fright.  “Gurthrygen hears the boy’s kinged himself and he’ll be over with fire and sword and smash up my beautiful castle.”

“I can’t stop him now,” I said.  “He’s doing what Arthur was born to do…”

“Must we all be smashed to pieces while he does it?” cried the Duke.

“Where’s my Guenevere?” said Arthur.

Despair flashed out of Cator’s face and the sudden glow of salvation filled it.

“You won’t find her here, Prince,” he said with satisfaction.  “You’ve won the girl but you haven’t won
me.
”

“I find her,” said Arthur, throwing off his Mercury mask and pulling a cloak over his nakedness.

Arthur went banging through the doors of the villa shouting for Guenevere, Cator’s servants running after him crying alarm.  He grabbed up sword and shield and hammered away Cator’s lifeguards.  He smashed in walls.  He hacked down the garden.  He stampeded the horses.  He drove out of his way the dogs, pigs, and chickens.  But he could not find her.

“Mother Merlin!” he shouted.  “Do your magic.  Find my woman!”

But it was Cator who answered him.

“Arthur, Duke, Prince, King Camelot, whatever else you are, you’ve won m’daughter because she tells me that in a dream she came to love you.  And because Lady Merlin remembers I’ll die in poverty and damned by the future if I don’t give her up to you.  But first you have to accept my dowry and do every other thing a father-in-law demands.”

Cator hauled Arthur into the auditorium to the great gold round table that hung over the ducal throne.

It was only now, looking close up, that I saw the table had become badged all over with the enameled arms of two hundred knights, none of their names clear enough to read in the lamp smoke.

“That table is the dream,” said Cator, “and the dream is your Guenevere.”

Cator held up his ducal ring.  “Finish rebuilding m’castles and towns…”

“The towns, too?” cried Arthur.

“And do it before you year’s indenture is up, and I give you this ring to inherit my duchy when I’m dead and Guenevere to be your queen of Camelot.”

* * *

At the closing of a manic year of Arthur’s blistering hard work, Caerconan was finished, all the surrounding towns refurbished, and Duke Cator lived in a splendor and sanitation the envy of every other prince in Europa.  His knights gleamed.  His peasants were well-fed and their livestock healthy.  The village by the shore at the castle’s foot was rich from plundering more than the usual number of castaways and flotsam.

Arthur had made the duchy wealthy and strong.  Lancelot had kept the Huns and Burgundians away, and his presence in the territory turned away the Franks.

No longer did the blue-fanged gorgon carved over the castle’s battle gate seem to yearn to fly north to Britain for a full belly and peace.

On a morning white and blue with calm water stretching across the Narrow Sea to the chalky cliffs of Britain, Phyllis Merlin and I stood on the quay with Arthur and his four shrunken comrades.  The incense of Cator’s bishops and priests curled around us bitter and hot, insuring a safer passage home than the half-drowned wreck of a passage we had coming over.

Sailors scrambled to prepare Cator’s oared galley ship, feeding the slaves at the oarlocks, checking the sail and the lines.

Despite his successes, Arthur was dressed in only his second suit of clothes since he had come to Brittany, and that plain and cheap, in keeping with Cator’s miserliness to his vassals and servants.

Villagers pushed near Arthur to shout for his farewell blessing and the customary sprinkling of coins.  Cator had granted Arthur a few copper pieces for this ceremony.  Arthur scattered them as liberally as he could.

After a year kicking him away from his table where he fought for scraps with the dogs, Cator reached down to stroke Bedivere’s sagging skin flaps as he might pet a melting dog.

“I’ll miss these beasts,” he said to Arthur.  “They have a hideous charm.”

Bedivere growled.

Cator said to his bishop, “Do these midget apes have any of the higher sensitivities, do you think?”

The bishop started.  “You mean as humans do?”

“Such as the love of money?”

The duke took a tiny gold coin from his purse and tossed it in the air for Bedivere to catch, which he did, his skin flailing around him as he leaped to do it.  The coin was the size of Bedivere’s eye.

The duke ruffled Bedivere’s beard and said, “Keep it, little beast.”

The bishop – unhappy creditor to the duke – gasped at this bizarre expenditure.

“Well, maybe not,” said the duke, snatching back the coin.

But Cator shouted to a slave to bring Bedivere and the others a fresh joint of raw meat to gnaw on their passage home, and settled them on the galley’s deck like puppies at a bone.

A trumpet’s call from Caerconan’s battlements!

Wailing flutes, banging drums, the high voices of a priestly choir.

Out of the battle gate came the procession bringing Guenevere to Arthur.

Guenevere sprawled on a decorated cart with draped curtains that flapped as the cart jogged, giving glimpses of her immense size.  Her hugely fat ladies and her personal lifeguards followed. 

Behind Guenevere’s cart was another hauling the immense, golden Round Table with its still unreadable enameled markings naming the two hundred knights who would sit at the table.

Wind rose, the tide trembled to go out, the ship’s captain shouted to the crowd, “Neptune calls us to sail!”

Arthur watching Guenevere’s closed cart said to me, sudden fright in his voice, “Is this truly the woman who can help me make Camelot, Mother?”

Phyllis Merlin laughed and said, “Of course she is.  She’s fat enough to brood-sow thousands.  She can be the queen-mother of any new world you want to make.”

But I was astonished at Arthur’s last-minute wedding terror and took his trembling hands.  I said to him, “You’re no longer the thoughtless boy who brought four apes into Brittany and bedded a merlin to ease the shame of failure.  But you’re not yet the man for Camelot.”

“How do I become him?” said Arthur, even more frightened.

“Wait.  Watch.  Laugh.  Then act.”

Arthur cried out in anguish, “I got better answers from the wind that never told me anything!”

“The wind is up!” cried the galley captain.  “We go!”

Phyllis bowed to me and said, “Goodbye, Greatest Merlin.”

She said to Arthur, “Goodbye, my loving Arthur King of Camelot.”  She kissed him and vanished into the watching crowd.

Arthur’s war band clustering at my knees whimpered in their little voices for relief.

“Return!” I said.

Bedivere, Kay, Percival, and Lucan burst up through their heaps of skin until they filled out their flesh, ripping apart their tiny clothes, the villagers tumbling howling away from them in fright.

Lancelot hauled clothes from his packs to cover their sudden nakedness, the war band jigging and shouting for happiness.  They cheered their freedom and jeered at me.