Avalon (4 page)

"No," said Rumon, grabbing the old woman by the shoulders and shaking her. "You must not touch the baby!"

She cringed away from him. "There's bread," she whispered, pointing to a pile of dark flat objects in a corner of the hut. "Take, and leave us alone."

Rumon picked up a "loaf" and bit into it. It was tasteless, burned and dry, a flat cake made of barley meal, yet he ate two of them while gnawing hunger pains decreased. "Water," he said. The woman pointed towards the door, where he saw a spring bubbling some yards away. He cupped his hands and satisfied his thirst at the spring. He washed his face and hands, tried to comb his hair with his fingers.

As he did so, he was seized with a passion to be gone. The heath and the sea below, and this spring were sweet enough. The human beings were nothing but the vilest of animals. Finally he arose and went back to the hut.

He stood just inside the doorway, while the roof grazed his head. The young mother looked up at him awed, at the blue velvet mantle, at the glittering belt and brooch, at the white linen tunic which had been bleached in the sea.

"I'll not leave just yet," said Rumon. "If you were Christians you'd understand this. Our god is merciful. He is the only God. As it is, you will take orders."

He gave orders and the old woman sulkily obeyed. Rumon made her cleanse the mother who was lying in a mess of childbirth blood and excrement. He himself brought her water, a great deal of it, which she gulped down frantically. He saw to it that her man fetched her a slice of donkey meat. These things he did in exactly the way he would have commanded the servants to tend a sick horse or dog at Les Baux. Fecklessness and disorder must be rebuked. Then Rumon tried to make them bury the afterbirth and cleanse the menhir. But this they would not do. The man snarled and brandished his skinning knife as near to

Rumon's throat as he dared. The old woman flung a rock which grazed his cheek, and fell in terror to her knees expecting retribution.

Rumon made a disgusted sound, and let them be.

The weather was fine, he slept in a thicket on the far side of the spring. And next morning he patrolled the crumbling cliffs along the sea. Once far out he saw a paUid corpse drift by. He could not possibly have reached it, and it disappeared towards the Lizard Point as he watched. He murmured a prayer and gave up, though he had meant to wait longer.

That afternoon he left.

The young mother had improved. She was nursing the baby whom they called simply Map, which is to say "Boy." None of them had special names, they addressed each other as Man, Old Woman, Young Woman. He learned nothing else about them, nor tried to.

He was frantic to be off, and braving the renewed filth in the hut, he extorted some vague directions from the girl who was slightly less brutish than the others. He was to follow a track through the downs until he came upon another hut like theirs. In it she thought Uved a man who had been as far as a place where there were several stone huts together. This was all she knew.

Rumon nodded decisively. The old woman's eyes showed relief. But on the girl's face was a pecuKar look of pleading. She touched her baby's head, as though to ask something about it. Rumon ignored both the expression and the gesture. It never occurred to him that the young woman might feel gratitude for his help the day before, or that she might have listened if he had tried to tell her of a faith which forbade blood sacrifices to phallic stones. The baby repelled him, its purplish head was covered with scurf, and the young woman was nearly as filthy as she had been yesterday; while the other two, he regarded as on a par with an ape the Lord of Les Baux kept shackled in a cave beneath his castle.

Rumon escaped from the hut, and set out along the track in the direction indicated. From then on his lot was easier. He found the next hut, which also had a bloodstained menhir beside it, yet here the occupants understood money. The silver penny Rumon gave them procured him a dinner of stewed rabbit, and a guide.

The next day he passed several tin mines, mostly abandoned, one still operating, and that night he reached civilization, or what seemed like it, since the village of Redruth boasted several stone houses, and a tiny church. It even had something approaching a hostel for travelers, where Rumon, to his great relief, was able to buy a horse.

He inquired for a priest, thinking to get some intelligible directions, and found that the "Papa" was on a journey to another parish. So Rumon refreshed himself for a day, eating ravenously, drinking sour barley ale, washing himself, shaving, and ridding himself of stray lice.

This very dawn he had set out on the northeastern track towards a place they called Bodmin which the hostel keeper thought might be on the way to the "Pow Saws" or English country.

In no time the dripping fog closed down, and he had been wandering ever since, until he met this girl whg had sat behind him on the; horse clasping his waist w4th thin, tentative arms.

"Look," Merewyn said suddenly, looking up at him and pointing ahead to a dazzle of yellow sands and a glimpse of foaming emerald breakers between two dark headlands. "Pad-stow, my home." Her voice quivered, and Rumon was startled out of his thoughts.

"You aren't happy to be home?" he asked.

"I'm afraid for my mother." Alerewyn caught her breath. "Afraid the saints haven't listened to my prayers. They didn't listen when the horror happened fifteen years ago. Nor did the monks help. That's why my mother hates the monks."

"Oh," said Rumon uncomfortably. "I'm sorry, but I'm sure

your prayers have been heard." He did not wish to hear of whatever horror had happened fifteen years ago, he wanted to find the monastery and rest himself and his horse.

"Tre-Uther," said Merewyn. "Stop!" Rumon jerked the reins. He noticed then they were at an opening in a circle of stones, and that there was a house inside the circle, quite a large house for Cornwall, built of granite slabs and roofed with thatch.

"Tre-Uther," repeated Rumon. "The homeplace of Uther? Is this where you live?"

She nodded, looking up at him; her glinting blue-green eyes were steady, she squared her shoulders and raised her chin. "Uther was my father. He was in direct Hne from King Arthur. So / am."

"Oh?" said Rumon, astonished and somewhat amused. Her pride was so evident. He wondered if she knew how very long ago King Arthur had lived — or what indeed was true about him. Vincent's songs about Arthur had been full of marvels, some of which Vincent himself admitted that he had made up.

"I salute you, Princess," said Rumon smiling, and refrained from mentioning his own royal lineage.

Merewyn did not hear him, she had turned and gave a gasp. "There's no smoke!" she whispered, staring at the peaked center of the thatching where the smoke hole was. She ran stumbling through the stone enclosure and into the house. The dog leaped after her.

Rumon sighed and dismounted. He could not in decency go searching for the monastery until he found out if the girl's mother were still alive.

He waited some time, first watching the fishermen paddle their coracles into the harbor along the estuary below him, then gazing out between the headlands towards the great western sea which had no limits.

Merewyn came back slowly, her feet dragging, her little face blanched of its rosy cheeks. "My mother is very weak," she said.

"I've rubbed her chest with the holy well water. She wants to see you."

An instinct of denial, of foreboding leaped up in Rumon. He did not wish to see another sick woman. He wanted no more delays and entanglements on his journey. He wanted no further reminders of death.

"I pray you, sir," said Merewyn softly. Tears started from her eyes, and rolled down her face.

Rumon tightened his lips, and nodded. He followed the girl into the house.

chapter two

At first when Rumon entered the hall at Tre-Uther, he was relieved. Merewyn's mother, Breaca, was standing near a window, her hand resting on the stone sill. She was quite young — not yet forty — and her face, though haggard, was still handsome. She had fine dark eyes which examined him steadily, and there was no appeal to pity or impression of weakness in her stately greeting.

"Welcome, Rumon," she said. "Merewyn tells me that is your name, and that you are bound for the court of the English king. Welcome to this royal house of Arthur, though we are no longer able to entertain you as once we might have before this child was born." She indicated Merewyn.

"No need to entertain me, madame," said Rumon smiling. "Surely the monks will receive me tonight."

He gaped at the change in her face. It stifi^ened while her eyes widened slowly with a frightening glare.

"The monks," she cried. "Those fat mewHng cowards. What can they do for you!"

"Mama —" whispered Merewyn, running to her mother. "Mama, don't."

Breaca pushed her aside and took three halting steps towards Rumon. "Look!" cried Breaca, pointing to her left arm which Rumon now saw was crooked, dangling from her shoulder like a rag. "And look!" she cried, raising her skirt so that he might see a jagged purple scar on her thin thigh. "That day the red devils landed from the North — that day they did this to me and more —" She paused, glancing at Merewyn. The wild light left her eyes, the momentary strength visibly drained from her. She put her hand across her mouth, as though to hush herself. She dragged to a wooden bedstead in the corner of the hall, crouched down on it, still holding her hand over her mouth.

iVIerewyn went to her mother with little soothing sounds, trying to make her lie down, which she would not.

Rumon too moved towards the bed, noting that a large roughly hewn wooden crucifix hung above it. He was shocked, and sorry for the girl, suspecting now that whatever else might be wrong with Breaca, she was also touched with madness.

The woman's hand dropped from her mouth, and she spoke again in a dull vague voice, looking at neither of the young people.

"They killed my serfs except some of the women whom they took with them. We had many serfs then. They seized our sheep and cattle and threw them in their ship. They ransacked our house and set fire to it. Then when Uthe'r came home — he had been across the river to — to — where was it he was? I don't remember. He saw the serpent ship drawn up on the beach. He hurried to help us, but he had no chance. They murdered him with their battle-axes the instant he touched shore. I saw his head cloven in two, his brains spilling out."

"iMama — " breathed Merewyn. "Mother, I pray you — " She seized the vial of holy-well water, and sprinkled the rest of its contents over the huddled woman.

Breaca looked at her daughter, and touched the girl's forehead. "Ah, you are a good child, it is because you come from the wondrous line of Arthur. Never forget it."

"No, Mama." She put her arms around Breaca, who had not done speaking though her face had gone gray with pain. "Come here, young stranger —" she said, beckoning to Rumon.

Breaca breathed heavily for a moment. "Do you know what the monks did while this was happening to us? They ran and hid in their church. They heard our screams for help, they had weapons — scythes and axes, pruning bills. There were a score of them in those days, and they had time to prepare as we did not. But they did nothing. They barred themselves in the church and cowered there, until long after the murderers had sailed away. Do you wonder that I hate the monks?"

"No, madame," said Rumon. "Yet monks are not trained to fight," he added uneasily.

"Ah —" said the woman. "They are trained for nothing but chantings and mealymouthed prayers which do no good. And they are trained to He. Remember that. They lie/ They would tell you lies." Her weakening voice held a special emphasis. She glanced suddenly at Merewyn, then fell back against her pillow.

The girl made a gesture and preceded Rumon outside into the sunlight. "She's not better — yet," said Merewyn, wiping her eyes on a corner of her skirt. "Though she's not often as — as you saw her. It was meeting a stranger, I suppose."

"Haven't you friends, neighbors to help?" he asked. "You shouldn't be alone like this."

"There's nobody. Only the fisher wives, and they're afraid to come here. They think — that my mother is a witch. But I have Caw," added Merewyn, staunchly pointing towards the pigsty, where the huge serf was feeding the swine. He had returned earlier in the coracle and was doing his accustomed chores.

Rumon thought that the dim-witted giant was hardly the prop most needed by this distressed household, and he looked at Merewyn with the first unalloyed sympathy he had ever felt.

"You're brave, my dear," he said, and put his hand over hers.

"I'm going to the monastery now," said Rumon, relinquishing her hand. "You need not tell this to your mother, don't distress her."

Her eyeUds dropped. "So this is farewell, Rumon? I'll not see you again."

"Yes, you will. I'll stop by tomorrow, on my way north."

Merewyn nodded. She watched him mount his horse, and pointed down the river in the direction of the monastery. "Is it true all monks tell lies?" she said. "Mother has always forbidden me to speak to the Padstow monks."

Rumon frowned. He did not understand Breaca's hysterical accusations, even granted that fifteen years ago the monks had failed her so badly. "I do not believe they all tell lies," he said. "I believe there must be some men of God amongst them, and despite your mother's feelings, I beheve that they may help you."

She shook her head, and started to protest, but Rumon did not wait. He turned the horse and cantered off along the riverbank. A night's lodging for himself had now become secondary to finding help for the girl and her mother. The woman had the look of death about her. She must be shriven. Despite the crucifix above the bed, despite Merewyn's pathetic journey to the Holy Well, it was obvious that the forlorn family was bereft of any spiritual comfort.

A half mile from Tre-Uther, Rumon came upon the church. It was small, but staunchly built of granite and roofed in slate. A carved wheel-headed cross stood by the entrance; a crude plaque above the door gave in Latin a dedication to St. Petroc, whose sacred bones were entombed therein.