The King Arthur Trilogy (6 page)

So Merlin brought the King to a hermitage in the forest, where the hermit was a man of great skill with
healing herbs, and within three days his wounds were so well knit together that he could ride again. And they set out for Caerleon once more.

But Arthur rode with his head on his breast. ‘I am ashamed,’ he said. ‘I have no sword.’

‘No need to be troubled as to that,’ Merlin told him. ‘Your old sword has served its purpose. It gave proof of your right to the High Kingship and it served you well through the battles that won back your kingdom, but now it is time for you to take your own sword; time for Excalibur, that shall go with you the rest of your days.’

So they went on deep and deeper into the forest, following ways that no man might know but only the light-foot deer; until at last the great hills rose about them and the trees fell back, and they came to the reedy margin of a lake. And though the light evening wind hushed through the branches of the trees behind them, no breath of moving air stirred the rushes, nor the surface of the water, nor the faint mist that scarfed its sky-reflecting brightness and hid the further shore. Almost, Arthur thought, it was as though there were no further shore, though he could see the hills that rose above it into the western sky. And there was no crying and calling of lake birds as there should have been; only a stillness such as, it seemed to him, he had never heard before. ‘What place is this?’ he asked at half breath as though he were afraid to break the silence.

‘It is the Lake,’ Merlin said, ‘it is the Lake of the Lordly Ones, who have their palace in its midst, unseen by the eyes of men. Away over yonder – away to the West – there lies Ynys Witrin, the Glass Island; Avalon of the Apple Trees, that is the threshold between the world of men and the Land of the Living that is also the Land of the Dead …’

His voice seemed to come and go, so that Arthur was not sure whether he heard the words or if it was only the faint wind-song in the trees behind them.

‘A strange place indeed,’ he said.

‘And not far off is Camlann,’ said Merlin beside him, and his voice came back out of the faint wind-song and sounded heavy and old.

‘Camlann?’ Arthur said, feeling a sudden coldness between his shoulders, as men do when a grey goose flies over the place of their grave.

‘Camlann, the place of the last battle … Nay, but that is another story, for another day as yet far off.’ Merlin’s voice lost its heaviness, ‘See, there is your sword as I promised.’

And looking where he pointed, Arthur saw an arm rise from the midst of the lake, clad in a sleeve of white samite and holding in its hand a mighty sword. And even as he looked, he saw a maiden whose dark gown and hair seemed to float about her like the mists come walking towards him across
the water, her feet leaving no ripple-track upon its brightness.

‘Who is that?’ whispered Arthur.

‘That is the Lady among all the Ladies of the Lake. Speak to her courteously and she will give you the sword.’

So when the maiden came to the lake shore and stood before them swan-proud among the reeds, Arthur dismounted and saluted her in all courtesy and asked her, ‘Damosel, pray you tell me what sword it is that yonder arm holds above the water.’

‘It is a sword that I have guarded for a long time. Do you wish to take it?’

‘Indeed I do,’ said Arthur, looking out across the lake with longing eyes. ‘For I have no sword of my own.’

‘Then promise me never to foul the blade with an unjust cause, but keep it always as befits the Sword of Logres, and it is yours.’

‘That I swear,’ Arthur said.

‘So,’ said the Lady of the Lake, ‘then step you into the barge that waits for you.’

And for the first time, Arthur saw a boat lying close by among the reeds.

He stepped aboard, and instantly the boat began to move, slipping through the water of its own accord and leaving no wake behind, until it checked like a well-gentled steed beside the arm where it rose from the lake depths.

Then Arthur reached out and said, ‘By your leave,’ and took the sword into his own hands, seeing how the milky waterlight played on the finely wrought gold and gems of the hilt and on the richly worked sheath. And as he did so, the arm in its white samite sleeve slipped quietly beneath the water.

And the boat returned as quietly to the nearby shore.

Of the Lady there was no sign, and it was as though she had never been; but Merlin stood where he had left him, holding the horse’s bridle. And Arthur buckled on his sword, and mounted and they set forth once more towards Caerleon.

And as he rode, Arthur drew his new sword, and looked at it, letting the evening light play with the silken surface of the blade. ‘Excalibur,’ he said softly; and then, ‘Excalibur,’ again.

Merlin looked at him sideways, and asked, ‘Which do you love better, the sword or the sheath?’

And Arthur laughed at the seeming foolishness of the question. ‘It is a pretty sheath, fair to see, with all these gold threads on the crimson leather; but the sword is a sword, and I would rather a hundred times have that!’

‘Nevertheless, have a care to that scabbard, and keep it always, for while it is safely buckled to your sword-belt, by the strength of the magic in it, however sore you may
be wounded in battle, you shall lose not one drop of blood.’

‘I will have a care,’ said Arthur, sheathing his blade. ‘But still I like the sword best.’

IT WAS NOT
long before the High King had need of his new sword; for in the spring of the next year, word came to him that Rience of North Wales was once more gathering a war host; and wild-riding bands of his followers were already harrying the lands of Arthur’s subject kings across his borders. And when Arthur sent word to him to cease his wolf-pack ways, all he received in reply was a message from King Rience that he had conquered more kings in his time than he could count on the fingers of both hands, and cut off their beards to make a border for his mantle, but that he would spare King Arthur if he sent his own beard to add to their number.

‘This is the ugliest message that ever I received,’ said Arthur to the messenger. ‘Go now back to your lord, and tell him that it is unwise to send such messages to the
High King of Britain. Tell him also that unless he ceases from his pillaging and comes in to swear fealty to me, as better men than he have done, I will come against him as I did before; but this time I shall do more than drive him back to his mountains. This time I shall take this kingly mantle of his, and not only his beard but his head to go with it!’ And he felt the young man’s down on his own chin, and added, with the laughter breaking through his wrath, ‘Tell him also that in any case, I fear my beard would be of little use to him as yet.’

So the messenger returned to his lord. And Arthur gathered his war hosts yet again and marched into the mountains of North Wales. And there he found Rience and many rebel knights and war leaders waiting for him; and among them King Lot of Orkney, which grieved him, for he knew in his heart that it was Queen Margawse and not her husband who was truly his enemy, and that it was by her will rather than his own that he was there.

All one long summer’s day they fought; and sometimes the battle swung this way and sometimes that; but as the day drew on, the tide of the fighting set more and more against the rebels, until, when the shadows of men and horses and spears grew long at evening, Rience and all his leaders lay dead, save for King Lot, who still fought on, stubborn as a boar at bay, with his bodyguard close about him.

Now King Pellinore of Wales was fated at times to ride
questing after a strange beast which had the head of a serpent and the body of a leopard and the feet of a hart, and which made in its belly a noise as of thirty couple of hounds giving tongue. And it so happened that on that day the quest had led him into the hills among which the battle was being fought. And hearing the outcry and the ring of weapons, and seeing the red and golden standard of Britain above the dust of the struggle, he turned aside from the quest for a while to join his High King. He came just as Arthur was leading in another charge against the men of Orkney, and riding with him and his household knights, while all around them sounded the cry of thirty couple of hounds giving tongue on a hot scent, he drove deep into the enemy mass until he reached King Lot himself and in the close-locked struggle all around dealt him such a crashing blow that the sword blade bit through helm and bone, and King Lot pitched from the saddle and was dead before he hit the ground.

And the heart went out of the men of Orkney, and they fled away into the gathering dusk, that still seemed full of fading hound music.

So peace came to Britain for a while; and the men of the North and West were quiet again in their mountains and the Sea Wolves fled away overseas. There were stray war bands still loose in the land, and evil knights and wild men lurking in the forests, ripe for any ill-doing
that came their way. And the men in the mountains told stories of ancient wrongs around the fires at night to keep their hate alive. Yet even so there was more of peace in Britain than there had been since long before the Romans left.

Now there was time for men to draw breath and think how they would choose to live their lives. And the best knights in the kingdom, many of whom had shared in the past fighting, gathered to Arthur in Camelot. Old knights such as Sir Ulpius and Sir Bleoberis the standard-bearer, who had served with King Utha Pendragon; young knights seeking glory and a shining cause to fight for, such as Sir Bedivere and Sir Lucan and Sir Gryflet le Fise de Dieu and Lamorack, who was the son of King Pellinore by his first love, before ever he wedded his queen; and unfledged squires eager for knighthood at the hands of the greatest king in Christendom. Even Gawain, the eldest son of King Lot and Queen Margawse, and with him Gaheris his younger brother (for all the sons of Margawse left home as soon as might be, until it came to the turn of Mordred, the last son of all. But that was another matter.)

Never, the harpers said, had such a court flowered about such a king.

Then, in a while, Arthur sent one evening for Merlin to come to him in the great chamber above the Hall, and said to him, ‘My lords and nobles are hounding me that
I should take a wife. Give me your counsel, for always your council has been good for me to hear!’

‘It is right that you should take a wife,’ said Merlin. ‘For now you are past twenty and the greatest king in all Christendom. Is there any maiden who comes close to your heart?’

And Arthur thought. And his thoughts touched in passing upon the fair faces of many maidens, and upon the dark ripe beauty of Queen Margawse, and flinched away from that memory to that which lay beyond. And so his thoughts came to rest upon a girl with smooth dark hair and shadowy grey-green eyes, making a garland of honeysuckle and columbine and Four-Seasons roses in a high-walled castle garden. And he said, ‘Guenever, the daughter of Leodegraunce of Camelaird.’ Merlin was silent a moment, and then he said, ‘You are sure of this?’

And Arthur was silent also. A big soft-winged moth hovered in through the window and began to flutter about and about the candles on the carved cloak-chest. Then he said, ‘I am very sure. I love the Princess Guenever, though I did not know it until now; and my heart feels good and quiet and at rest when I think of her.’

Merlin, knowing what he knew of the future, could have said, ‘Grief upon me! Look elsewhere! For if you marry the Princess Guenever, sorrow and darkness and
war and death will come of it by and by, to you and her and your dearest friend and to all the kingdom.’ But he knew that no man may escape what is written on his forehead, and he knew what was written upon Arthur’s as surely as he knew what was written on his own. So he said, ‘Sir, if you were not so sure, I could find you a score of maidens as beautiful and good as she, who could gladden your heart just as sweetly. But I know you, and I know that when your heart has gone out of your breast it will not lightly return to you again.’

‘That is so,’ said the King.

And the moth blundered into the sea-blue heart of a candle flame, and fell with singed wings.

Then Merlin set out next day for Camelaird, and stood before King Leodegraunce, and told him that the High King of Britain would have the Princess Guenever for his Queen.

When he heard this, Leodegraunce was overjoyed, and said, ‘This is the best tidings that ever I heard. Assuredly the High King shall have my daughter to wife.’ And then he thought, What shall I give him for her dowry, for of lands he has already all that he can wish for? And the answer came to him, and he said aloud, ‘And her dowry shall be a thing that will mean more to him than lands or gold, for I will give him the great Round Table that belonged to Utha his father, and that Utha gave to me, and with it a hundred knights of my best and bravest!’
He sighed. ‘There’s room at that table for a hundred and fifty; but after the wars of my lifetime I can spare no more.’

‘The hundred will be enough, for Arthur has good knights of his own. He will be glad of your gift, and glad of the lady who you send to him to be his Queen,’ said Merlin, with a small inward-turning smile, for he himself had fashioned the Round Table for Utha Pendragon, long years ago when he was young, and he knew its powers.