The Sword and The Quest: Lady Merlin's Saga (Epic Fantasy) (38 page)

But the sword would not draw.

Colgrin shouted in rage and clapped crooked hands to make thunder in empty air.  Falcons dropped dead out of the sky.  Colgrin went up into the air in a bloody spout and was gone.

Gurthrygen, out of his litter and clutching the stone-stuck sword to steady himself, cried, “Merlin!  What can save us from that?”

I put Arthur’s hands on the sword hilt.

The frightened crowd raised a thin cheer of hope.

The elders groaned and leaned out of their chairs to watch, dragging beards and beads on the stone.

Arthur’s war band with Guenevere, Morgause, and Mordred began a prayer chant.

Arthur hauled on the sword, cheering himself.

It would not draw.

“What do I do to win this sword, Mother?” he cried.

Gurthrygen on his litter groaned, “Child-Merlin, damn you, how much longer must I live to save the throne for this wretched failure?  Let me die.”

Knights and ladies swarmed up onto the rock and pushed Arthur aside to try the blade.  Bedivere bulled through the swarming crowd, fisting aside men and women, shouting, “The blade’s Arthur’s!  Get back, back.  Why waste your energy on what will never be yours?  Don’t stain it with your touch.  It belongs to Arthur.  Back, you diseased beasts, back!”

“How is it his,” cried a warrior-princess, “when it won’t draw for him?”  She hauled on the sword but could not move it.

Arthur in his misery squatted at the edge of the Brutus stone as though ready to throw himself to the ground and die.

I heard the sword speak to him in its soul’s voice. 
Excalibur!
it said.

Arthur leaped to his feet, misery gone, surprised hope in his face.

Guenevere said to the king, “What do we do with Arthur now?”

Ronwen said, “Throw him to the dogs or the Scots, Husband.”

Horst said, “He’s a good enough prince to be a Saxon warlord.  Gift him to Colgrin and you might save your throat, King.”

Gurthrygen said to Horst, “I’ve married your stinking tribe but I don’t make human sacrifices to it, except myself.”

The king turned to me and said, “Take him to the monastery at Fleem.  The silent monks.  Shove him in a cell there.  Shut him up and shut him up.”

The hope Excalibur had put into Arthur fled.  “To exile?” he cried.  “Brother, no!”

“Fleem will make you a saint or a rogue.  When you’re one or the other, come try the sword again.  Maybe then I can die.”

“What about me?” cried Guenevere.  “I’m betrothed to him.”

“I’ll store you with all the other surplus princesses of the kingdom in the Convent of the Ladies of Lake Avalon.”

“Cage me there?” Guenevere cried, appalled.

Lancelot pushed through the crowd.  “My mother’s there.  I’ll stand your guard until the king brings you back to Arthur.”

“Oh, no,” I said, “that begins another disaster even before Camelot is made…”

“Leave them all,
all,
to their private stupidities, Lady Merlin,” said the king.  “They’ll have them anyway.”

“But Mordred and Lancelot are the destroyers of…”

“I know all the myths you believe, Child.  I also know nothing you want is real until Arthur draws the sword.  Leave these human creatures to be human creatures for a span of time.  Then you can try again to reorder the world as you want.  After Arthur draws the sword.”

Gurthrygen said to his court and the crowd, “You’re all dismissed.  Go away.”

He said to me, “Dismiss us, too, Lady.”

* * *

I took the king and me out of ourselves.  We squatted in spirit at the edge of the Brutus stone, watching the human chaos around us.  Lancelot bickered with Ronwen.  Guenevere wept to be condemned to a lady convent.  The war band stared gloomily at their war chief crumpled in despair of exile.  Horst and his Saxons jeered at each Briton who tried and failed to draw the sword.  The Romans watched it all, arrogant and quick-eyed.

“Have I given you everything you want?” Gurthrygen said to me.

“You’ve put him in a monkery, King.  You’ve shoved Guenevere and Lancelot into the same bed.  How is that giving me what I want?”

“Where else but Fleem to frighten off British and Saxon knives hunting for the man who’s to be the next king?” said Gurthrygen.  “Every monk at Fleem is a furious old warrior sentenced there by some forgotten prince.  They’ll protect my brother for you.  As for Guenevere and Lancelot, let them love.  That will end Arthur’s love for her now and spare you the mess she’d make of your Camelot.”

The king whacked Excalibur with his fist and said, “Besides, look at your embryo ‘king of Camelot.’  Arthur is a killer in silk and velum that wants a soul.  If he can’t find one at Fleem, then he’s not the Arthur you want for Camelot.”

“Maybe you’re a cleverer man than I’ve ever given you credit,” I said.

“Maybe I’m a star that flares brightest before death,” wheezed the king.  “Bring him back to me a man with a soul, Merlin.  Bring him back to me a king.  Let me flare out.”

* * *

At the south-bound turning of the road, on a hilltop, Bedivere stopped our cavalcade and the Round Table on its cart.  Rain that had hung suspended in the sky fell in sheets in a distant field and ran toward us. We saw the monastery of Fleem down there, as tightly walled as an old Legionary castrum.  Here is where we would exile Arthur.

We pulled rain hoods over our heads and cloaks over armor, furled banners and flags, and tightened the sacking on the supply carts and the massive Round Table.  I, pitying my screaming shield, wrapped it in cloth.

But I was young enough to enjoy a cold rain after so many years as an antique huddling away from cold and wet.  I opened my hood to let the water stab my face.

Guenevere beside me, in the privacy of the rain and her hood, said, “Do you know me?  Hear my soul’s name – I’m
Guanhumara.
”

“Lord God, why tell me that?  I haven’t asked for it.”

“Because I call on you to command you,
Branwynn.
”

I used my horse to shove Guenevere’s horse off the road and into the trees and greater privacy.

“Speak to me,” I said.

“I’m pregnant with a prince.”

“A Pendragon?”

“He will
be
a Pendragon.”

“But is he Arthur’s?”

“You’ll tell him it is.”

“Let me hear its name, damn you.”

“I’ve named it Gawain.”

“Lancelot’s bastard!”

I put my dagger against her belly.  It was a scene I’d lived before, watching Duke Cator ready to cut Guenevere from her mother’s belly the night I invented the Round Table.

“Do it, Brave Baby Killer,” Guenevere said, “and pervert this cycle.  You’ve no love for me or Gawain.  You’ve no love for anyone but Arthur…”

“Gawain!” I said, the name filling me with sudden hope.

I saw a hundred histories of the Hero Gawain, in all the lives that merlins had lived.  But history was becoming faint, drifting past memory into loss as I grew younger.

Yet every memory leaves a residue of hope.  I put away the dagger.  I leaned from the saddle to put ear to her stomach to listen to the fetal song.

Yes, here was the making of Gawain!  The last and the best of the Round Table.  The bastard prince, the perfect knight, the counterweight to Mordred.  The only adventurer at the Table to touch the Holy Grail.  Arthur’s true and loyal son filled up with Lancelot’s traitor’s blood.

I wept.  I clutched her belly against my ear to listen to the gurgling embryo and wept.  So much had gone so wrong, so much of this age was so far out of my control.  The hope of having a Gawain to support Arthur was delicious joy to me.

“Arthur!” I shouted.  “She’s making your son!”

Late in the afternoon, after the rain had come and gone many times, after the drunken howling hilltop celebration for the new-made Pendragon prince, Guenevere and Lancelot led their party, staggering in their saddles with drunken exhaustion, south toward the Lady Convent at Avalon.  Arthur watched them go and I watched Arthur.  He had in his face the same love-yearning for Guenevere and Gawain that he carried for Mordred.

Here was a man more happy to father a family than to rule a kingdom.  Give him a gaggle of babies, I thought, and he’ll sink into his orchards and never dream of Camelot.

Now, approaching my own new youth, I felt pity for Arthur for what I must take from him to create the perfect king.

Our cavalcade carried on downhill through sun and rain, Arthur watching toward the south as though he might still see his pregnant Guenevere gone away across the horizon.

Arthur raised an olive branch of peace to a silent monk standing outpost to the monastery.  The monk waved us through into a world of brilliant sunshine and a silence so severe even the bees sucking at flowers were soundless.

“Where will you all go?” Arthur said to his companions.

Bedivere said, “Call to me in my country when you’re a free man again, Arthur.  I’ve a palace, four marriages, and a fortress to repair after our holiday in Brittany.  Another civil war to crush.  A usurper to crucify.  Saxons to harry out of my private lands.  Plenty to do.  Call me, but not soon!”

Bedivere slapped his horse toward the south and distant Cornwall.

Lucan said, “I’m to York, Brother, to purify my city.  To drive out all the infesting Saxons, Picts, and Scots the king’s let in.  Send me your call.  But give me time.”

He kissed Arthur and turned north with his retinue, Menw and Gwyrhr among them, self-assigned to Lucan’s authority.

“I return to the king as his herald,” Percival said.  “You can find me there.”  She turned east.

Kay said, “I’m a mercenary with no castle and wife to command me and no land of my own.  I claim that hilltop for me” – he flung his spear the long distance to prong into the hilltop – “and there I’ll stay until your call.”

I said to Arthur, “I’m to my villa to hold the world steady for your return.  Come back to me the man who can draw the sword and let’s make Camelot.”

Arthur gazed across at the monastery buildings.  “Exile here among voiceless priests!  Who can make a hero out of that?”

He rode away toward the stables, two slaves driving the cart with the Round Table.

I joined Kay on the hilltop to make the first night’s vigil.  A swirling breeze turned the feathers on our spears, bringing with it from the monastery a priestly choir chant, and then silence.

I took myself to dust and went away home on the wind.

* * *

I assembled myself out of the air at the edge of my lands.  I was exhausted.  I had done too many conjurer’s tricks and wasted too many of my failing resources.  I trotted horse across my land taking the cheers of serfs and vassals, feeling the sunshine on my clean, young face and the surging power of fresh blood in my arms and legs.

The joy of youth made in me a surprise resurgence of my merlin’s powers and I saw with my soul’s eye Arthur at Fleem.

He was bathed and shaved and with good oil on his body.  Dressed in the rough wool habit of a silent monk.  Standing in the abbot’s quarters – plain plaster walls, the drifting scent of incense and sweet peas.  The abbot wore a gilt crucifix made from a dagger.  They stood together over an opened holy text, both as still as frozen.  Silent.

A bell rang.

The abbot said, suddenly, “We’ve an hour to speak.  Who are you?  Be quick.”

“Arthur Pendragon…”

“Duke of Cornwall.  King’s brother.  Peacemaker with Brittany.  Hero-fool of York battle.  Father of something off an Orkney witch.  Go on, go on, speak!  We’ve just one hour in twenty-four to speak.  Say something, anything.  Something new.  Delight me!”

Scullions rushed into the room with leather buckets of barley soup.

“What, no meat?” cried the abbot.  “No peas?”

A scullion fished with his fingers through the abbot’s bucket to find the meat drowned on the bottom.  The abbot sniffed it.

“Not salted, for Jesu’s sake, not in this season?  Could this be game?”

“It could be the answer to a prayer, Abbot Father,” said the boy.

“Venison?” said the abbot, balling the meat and stuffing it into his mouth, drooling grease and soup.

The scullions cried in unison, “The health of Jesu to you both,” and exited.

“Shame!” cried the abbot, chewing his meat.  “All tastes the same out of our kitchens.  Wish I had some fish paste ripe as fresh farts to flavor it.”

He spat gristle onto the rushes matting the floor.  A dog lurched from under the reading table and snapped it up.

“Talk to me quick, Duke, fill up the hour with new words.  What does the king want me to give you?”

“I don’t know.”

“You don’t know what you’re supposed to want?” said the abbot, baffled.

“I want to be king.”

“Don’t we all?”

The abbot sat behind his desk and picked venison from his teeth with the dagger-crucifix.

“I don’t often train kings.  I shape souls and kings rarely have them.  Those that do get them damned to Hell pretty quick.  Why should I bother with yours?”

“Merlin chose me for Camelot.”

It was the hour of speech but the abbot could not speak.

“So it’s true,” the abbot gasped.  “Merlin is making Camelot!”

He lapsed into silence again.

He burst out, “Sobeit!  You’ll have to learn everything at once.  An hour a day of speech is not much time but you’ll take your teaching directly from me, the greatest of all masters of the truth, in the Hero Jesu, the Triune God, the Lord of Creation, a few of the still-living demigods of the old cycle before Christus, and I’ll teach you to hate the Demon with a passion you’d ordinarily reserve only for a betraying lover.  Welcome to the Order of the Silent Brothers.  How many silent decades do I have with you?”

“Merlin will call me when my time’s up,” Arthur said.

“Then let’s begin in a frenzy.  Your first lesson.  The Lord God made Heaven and Earth, Adam and Eve, Lucifer and Pharaoh, but he made the First Caesar and Queen Boadicea, too, and transported the Trojans to Britain after the fall of Troy.  There, that’s all the ancient history worth knowing.  Forget Alexander and Pythagoras and all those other Greek egomaniacs.

“Now, of Earth, Air, Fire, and Water, the four elements of life, the greatest force is Wind.  It is the animating power of all things Earthly, the World Soul made physical.  That’s as much as any king needs to know about the mystery of Wind.

“As for Time,” said the abbot, “what has been, is, and will be again and so on to the same nonexistence of all things that existed before the Great Jesu invented the world.  Heaven’s in there somewhere but who knows where?  That, not our favored Pelagianism, is the only heretic mystery I want you to learn from me.

“Now to Justice as taught in the holy texts.  A good king makes three kinds of justice in his kingdom, in accord with the Rule of three.  Justice to Britons, meaning Christians.  Justice to foreigners, meaning lesser Christians.  Justice to Pagans, meaning Saxons, whom you simply kill…”

The bell rang and all speech stopped in the monastery, the abbot clapping shut his mouth in mid-sentence.

Arthur shouted in his soul’s voice,
Mother, what have you done to me?

* * *

Muddy spring faded into dusty summer around me as I sat on my villa’s throne below the screaming shield slung on the wall, but I ignored it all.  I saw only Arthur in his silent monkery with its abbot desperate for each day’s single hour of chattering education.

I watched Arthur bored at the endless rounds of prayer commanded by bells and the rising and setting of the sun, bored at the constant reading of dull Latin texts, the copying of books, the gardening, the husbandry, the rebuilding of monastery walls, the selling of eggs in markets, and the making and over-drinking of the monks’ beer.

Bored until he came to realize the sum total of the lives of most men and women is routine and boredom and stumbling discontent pierced only occasionally by surprise delight.

I watched him in his loneliness, without Guenevere and Mordred, as he listened to the silence that was everywhere around him in the monastery.  The silence was a creature of its own and heavy-weighing, except for the relieving chunk of the monks’ digging tools and the wheeze of wind.

Until he realized loneliness and silence can be balm for human pain, and there is too much pain and too little silence in the world of ordinary people.

I watched him in the library startled by the beauty of what he read in forgotten texts Greek, Egyptian, and Persian.  I watched him standing in the observatory tower stunned by the beauty of the night sky or gazing across fallow fields under bright sunshine and passing rain, dreaming.

But dreaming of what?  I was so much less a merlin now I could not say.

I watched him howl with joy when he and the monks in the fields, stripped nearly naked at their work under a burning sun, heard Kay on his far hilltop smash sword against shield as warning.  I saw the monk on lookout run through the fields gesticulating wildly in place of speech.

Arthur and the monks with him cheered without speaking as they unslung their war clubs and ran in frightening silence, like tongue-less men, toward the blue-faced Scots raiders, smashed them and drove them back into their dank forests.

I saw Arthur trail the monks back to their fields, sweating and happy for a change in the plodding daily routine.  Until he realized the terror and pain of ordinary women and men for holding onto their small bits of life.

I watched Arthur there in the field marveling at this new understanding, at all he now understood about ordinary life, about the needs, hungers, and frights of the everyday people who fill up every kingdom of the Earth and who are too often ignored by heroes and kings.

Of the need to look within himself and to measure himself against the uses of life to become what he had to become.

Even at my distance from the monastery, I could hear the irritating tintinnabulation of the bell marking the speaking hour.  I saw a flash of Arthur’s impatience for what he knew came next.  I saw the abbot wipe battle mire from his war club and rush to Arthur, desperate to continue the conversation interrupted the day before, as all their previous conversations had been interrupted, by the silence bell.

Passing rain rinsed battle-dust from Arthur and washed impatience from his face.  After piling up so much understanding of so many ordinary things, of learning to measure himself, Arthur now realized that affectionate conversation is at the heart of all human creatures, and must be for their king, as well.

The abbot saw all this, as well, and was too startled to speak.

Arthur said to him, with sudden affection for the talk-hungry man, “You’ve taught me all I can learn here, Father Abbot, more than enough for any king.”

Arthur tossed aside his working tools and his war club, clasped the abbot in farewell, and climbed the hilltop toward Kay’s lookout.

Here, now and at last, was the whole Arthur.

I shouted my victory cry but it came out as weeping joy.

He was the king I wanted but he was not the king I expected.

He was a better man.

Arthur heard my happy weeping.  He looked out at me from across Britain.

He said,
Do you feel it, too, Merlin?

Then he said aloud into the world, “The age has begun to change.  I feel the vibrations of it beneath my feet.  Camelot is coming near.  Every day merlins are evaporating from the Earth, sucked away into the cold emptiness between the stars.  The age is coming when we won’t need them.  You too must leave this world, Mother.  I will be desperately unhappy without you but I’ve finished myself and you can go.  You
must
go.”