The Seeing Stone (23 page)

K
AY HAS TRAVELED THE LAST MILES OF HIS LIFE AS A
squire. He's standing in front of the high altar in the church of Saint Paul, and Arthur-in-the-stone is standing beside him. Sir Ector and the archbishop of Canterbury are facing us, and all around us, in the gloom, I can see a company of knights—the Knight of the Black Anvil and the copper-colored knight and the spade-faced knight, the ten knights who have guarded the sword in the stone, the hundreds of knights who have ridden to London.

I can't see Merlin anywhere. Well! He said he'd only ride with us as far as Oxford, but I thought he might change his mind.

Kay keeps rubbing the top of his head. It must be sore because it has been shaved, and he has a bald spot as big and round as an egg yolk.

Kay's wearing a white robe and, over that, a scarlet cloak with a white belt, because he's ready to shed blood fighting for the Church, and will always try to be pure in mind and body.

“Kay,” says the archbishop. His voice is loud and deep, and it echoes around the church. “Why do you wish to become a knight?”

Kay doesn't reply.

“To amass treasure?” demands the archbishop. “To lay your hands on booty?”

“To amass…” the echo answers. “To lay your hands…”

“Or so that other people have to bow down before you?” continues the archbishop.

“No,” says Kay in a firm voice. “I wish to become a knight so I may serve Christ the Lord, pure in mind and pure in body. So I may live for Christ as He died for me.”

“Whom will you protect?” asks the archbishop.

“All those who need my protection,” Kay replies. “In this kingdom, too many people suffer injustice. The rich rob the poor; the strong trample the weak. Widows and orphans are defenseless. I will oppose evil wherever I find it.”

“It is said, and well said,” says the archbishop.

“Said…” booms the great church. “Said…well said…”

Now Kay gets down onto his left knee, and Sir Ector picks up Kay's sword from the high altar. He raises it and it hovers over Kay's right shoulder, its tip glinting like the wing of a dragonfly.

Three times and lightly my father taps Kay on the shoulder.

“In the name of God and Saint Edmund,” he says, “I dub you knight. Sir Kay, be gallant. Be courteous. Be loyal.”

At once all the knights in the church begin to call out “Sir Kay! Sir Kay!” And now they break rank, and crowd round us; they slap Kay's back, and shake him by the right hand. And Kay, Sir Kay, turns towards me…

All at once, my seeing stone went dark. Dark as a raven's wing. An old nail-head. Dark as the fresh earth on little Luke's grave.

S
LIM SERVED COLD CARP WITH A HOT, SPICY SAUCE FOR
dinner this morning and, as soon as we'd finished, Will came wading into the hall.

“I'm sorry and all,” he said. “I know it's Christmastide and all, but I finished it, and it's proper to put it up before the end of the year.”

Will laid the stone on the end of the long table, and my father and mother inspected it.

“Very handsome,” my father said. “Come and have a look, Arthur! Will has cut your letters so deep they'll last one hundred years.”

One hundred years! 1299. Will this manor still be here then? And will Caldicots still be the lords of it? Five generations?

“Call him son! Call him brother!” my father said. “Very good, Arthur! You must say your poem when we put up the stone. We'll do it this afternoon, and then I want you and Sian to help me make an icehouse.”

“And Gatty?” I asked.

“Good idea,” my father said. “In case Sian needs to be rescued.”

Then I looked at little Luke's tombstone.

“Father,” I cried. “It's wrong.”

“Wrong?”

“Look! It says fourth son. Luke wasn't your fourth son.”

My father bent over the tombstone, and sighed gently.

“Yes,” he said. “So it does.” Then he looked up at me. “Well! I wrote it down for Will. It doesn't matter.”

“Doesn't matter?” I cried. “Serle, me, Matthew, Mark, Luke…” I began to shiver and I couldn't stop.

How can my father have mislaid one of his sons? Or did he mean to write “fourth”? That could only mean that one of his sons is not his son. It's not me, is it? Am I not my father's son? How can I find out?

Perhaps I can ask my mother, or Nain. It's no good asking my father, he doesn't tell me anything.

Tanwen loved little Luke and, when he was so ill, she often sat up all night nursing him. So my mother sent Ruth down to Tanwen's cottage, and asked her to meet us at the lych-gate, and help put up Luke's tombstone.

Tanwen wouldn't come, though, so my mother went down to her cottage herself, and brought her to the graveyard. She had an arm round Tanwen's waist.

But perhaps it would have been better if Tanwen hadn't come. Serle nodded curtly to her, but then he stood as far away from her as he could, on the opposite side of the grave, with his heels on Mark's grave, and he kept biting his lower lip. Nain turned her back on Tanwen, and when I spoke my poem, Tanwen began to shake and then to weep without making a sound, and I knew she was thinking about her own baby, and what will happen to it.

“A mother whose baby is taken away from her must not weep,” said Oliver. “Our Lord God shows great kindness when he takes a
child away from this foul world. Babies and children, they're alive. They are angels.”

When Oliver said this, I remembered how Merlin told me that Oliver was wrong and a heretic. I looked at Merlin, but he had put one arm around Tanwen, and did not look at me.

Will dug a little trench right next to Luke's head, and lowered the bottom of the gravestone into it. Then we packed black earth around it, and I said my poem, and each of us touched the stone. My mother and father were first—but is it true? Have they only had four sons?

Nain followed them and as she touched the stone, she said, “May the birds of Rhiannon sing over you.” Serle was next, then me and Sian. Oliver followed us. Then Merlin and Tanwen. And if our tears and longings count for anything, Luke's gravestone will stand upright forever.

There are just two more days in this century—today and tomorrow—and I think time gives authority to words. “Little Luke. Fourth son of Sir John and Lady Helen de Caldicot.” In one hundred years, people will believe what this tombstone says, whether or not it is true. But I am alive now, and I need to find out.

I
T'S TIME YOU AND I TALKED.”

That's what my father said to me, up on the top of Tumber Hill.

The huge bonfire blazed. Its heart was brighter and darker than anything I've ever seen, and it spat golden and orange fireflies at the stars. All around us, white faces and black faces gamboled and gallumphed and gallivanted and shouted and sang.

I saw Gatty and Jankin in the shadows, their eyes shining, and Sian spitfiring around the flames, clapping and jumping; I saw Merlin striding along the hilltop with his dark cloak behind him.

Away north, I could see fires burning at Wart Hill and Woolston and Black Knoll and Prior's Holt. To the south I saw fires at Brandhill and Downton-on-the-Rock, Leintwardine Manor and far Stormer; and away to the southwest, there was a ninth fire, so far off that it kept blinking, white and cold and uncertain of itself, like a fallen star. My father said he thought this fire was at Stanage, or else Stow Hill.

Nine fires and our own fire, roaring and crackling. But away west in front of us, there was nothing but a mask of darkness—Pike Forest and the wilderness of Wales.

My father and I stood shoulder to shoulder, looking out, looking ahead; and far below, Oliver began to toll the church bell.

Each toll was like a deep breath, followed by long silence. The old year was dying.

Then the bell stopped tolling and, high on the hill, we all stood silent. Humans and animals and birds and trees: We held our breath.

All at once, Oliver began to peal the bell as fast as he could. He rang it and rang it, and we all cheered and hugged each other. The new century had begun!

Nothing was different, but everything seemed so. The gift of the new century to each of us is hope and intention and energy, and these things can cause great changes.

“It's time you and I talked,” my father said.

“Your plans for me, you mean?” I asked falteringly.

“Yes,” said my father. “After all, you can't see in the dark, can you?”

Then he took my sore right arm and, holding a flaming brand, gently and firmly guided me down Tumber Hill.

“In the morning, then,” said my father. “The first morning of the new century. Can you wait until then?”

M
Y STONE WAS GLOWING THROUGH ITS FILTHY SAF
-fron cloth. I swear it was.

I knew I wouldn't be able to sleep. Not after my father's promise to talk to me. So as soon as everyone was breathing deeply, I lit two candles and came up here to my writing-room.

At once I pulled my obsidian out of its crevice, and unwrapped it. It was alive. It was seeing and speaking again, and now it has shown me something quite wonderful. A new year miracle.

Sir Ector and Sir Kay and Arthur-in-the-stone are cantering along London wall, and I'm carrying my father's banner. There are knights and squires riding beside us, in front of us, behind us; all the knights are wearing shining armor, and the squires are carrying their lords' banners.

“Today we'll tourney,” my father says to Kay. “Tomorrow we'll joust.”

“Agreed,” shouts Kay.

We're all in high spirits, and so is the west wind. It guffaws and tugs at all our banners; it whistles through the bars of the knights' visors.

Now I can see the tournament field: a throng of ladies and knights and squires and horses, pavilions, little striped tents. I can
hear such a hubbub: talk and laughter and singing and braying trumpets.

“No!” yells Kay. Then he pulls up so sharply that Gwinam throws back his head and whinnies, and kicks up his front hooves.

“What is it?” asks my father.

“My sword!”

“Sir Kay!” my father exclaims.

“Arthur! You dressed me. Surely you noticed.”

“No, Kay,” says Sir Ector. “Blame yourself.”

“Please,” says Kay. “Please, Arthur, will you go back and get it from our lodging?”

“We'll wait for you beside the judges' tent,” my father says.

I wheel Pip round. I turn my back on all the rainbow colors and the trumpets, and gallop as fast as I can into grey London.

I know Arthur-in-the-stone didn't want to let Kay down. He had only just been knighted, and this was his first fighting tournament. But if Serle left something behind, I wouldn't go to get it. He has so often been unkind to me during this past year. No! Arthur-in-the-stone and I are the same and not the same.

I clatter down the highway past the church of Saint Paul, and then I thread my way through the narrow streets, right and left and left and right, until I reach our lodgings.

Without dismounting, I lean out of my saddle and knock at the door. I bang the door a second time. I hammer it a third time. But there's no one at home. The door's locked and the windows are barred. Maybe everyone has gone to watch the tournament.

“What can I do?” I say. “Kay must have a sword today.”

Arthur-in-the-stone pulls at the roots of his hair in the way I
always do when I'm thinking, and then shouts, “I know! I know what!”

My voice bounces from wall to wall all the way down the string-thin street. “Sir Kay needs a sword and he'll have a sword. I'll go back to the churchyard.”

I gallop back to the lych-gate, dismount and tie Pip to it.

“Wait here!” I say, and Pip looks at me with the mournful look of a horse well used to waiting.

I have ridden so hard from tournament to lodgings, lodgings to lych-gate, but now I'm behaving as if there's all the time in the world.

Somehow I know that unless I am quite calm, I will never do anything really well. I must not rush or snatch. I must always unhurry.

Look! I walk in under the shadow of the great church, and round to the eastern end.

I walk up to the huge block of dressed stone, decorated with gold lettering, with the sword and anvil sitting on it.

Slowly I step up onto the plinth of stone.

There is no one else in the churchyard. Just Arthur-in-the-stone, and a dozen London pigeons, pink-eyed, purple-breasted.

I stare at the sword, and I think I look almost angry, yet very calm. I stare until there's nothing else in the world except for the sword and me.

I open my left palm, and grasp the winter-cold hilt. I close my eyes and open my eyes. Lightly and fiercely I pull the sword, and it slides out of the stone.

A
T DAWN IT WAS SO COLD IN MY WRITING-ROOM, AND
so cold outside. But I was burning.

Oliver was already up. I saw him on his way over to the church and called out to him. We exchanged New Year's greetings, and then I told him how we could all hear the Watch Night bell, all of us up on top of Tumber Hill. Oliver produced his Bible from inside his cloak. “Choose a page,” he said. “And now close your eyes…”

I made a circle in the air with my right forefinger, and then dabbed the page.

“The Letter of Saint Paul to the Ephesians,” Oliver announced. “'Take the helmet of salvation and the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of God.' There, Arthur, what does that tell you?”

“The truth!” I shouted. “I have taken the sword. I have! I took it out of the stone!”

“What are you talking about?” said Oliver.

“I've seen a miracle,” I cried. “A light in the dark before dawn.”

“New Year madness,” said Oliver, snapping his Bible shut. “You're not the first either. Last night I met Joan and Brian when they came down from the hill, and they clutched at me and begged me to bless them.”

“Why?”

“They were afraid. They said they saw Merlin flying down from Tumber Hill.”

“Tumber Hill,” I exclaimed. “He did disappear once, and he can leap like a salmon, but I don't think he can fly.”

“Merlin hasn't got wings, has he?” said Oliver. “Of course he can't fly. Now Arthur, you chose those words and they chose you.”

“Yes, Oliver.”

“Put on the belt of truth and the breastplate of righteousness. That's what Saint Paul tells us. Hold up your shield of faith. Brandish the sword of the Spirit, which is the word of the Lord. That's the way of life you've chosen for yourself, Arthur. Put on the whole armor of God.”