The Seeing Stone (25 page)

T
HE CHRISTMAS FOLD! IT HAS BEEN BREACHED.

For four days everything my father has told me has buzzed inside my head and my heart. It has followed me everywhere—the hall, my writing-room, the stables, the church, up and down the stream. The only way I can escape is into my other world: my obsidian.

But what kind of escape is that? Arthur-in-the-stone is no more Sir Ector's son than I am Sir John's son. But I never knew that until I pulled the sword from the stone, and Sir Ector told me King Uther was my father and Ygerna my mother. When I saw myself in the stone, begging Sir Pellinore to knight me, and dreaming butterflies into the fists of Sir Lamorak and Sir Owain, and riding to London, I never realized I was also the baby the hooded man delivered to Sir Ector and his wife. So now at last I understand why the stone showed me King Uther and Ygerna. They're the beginning of my own stone-story.

In the stone, Sir William tried to kill me when he ambushed me up in the tree. But I killed him. And then, when he came here before Christmas, he wounded me. Sometimes what happens in my life echoes what happens in the stone, sometimes it's the other way round. But my stone also shows me people and places I've never seen before—the fortress of Tintagel, King Uther, Ygerna, the hooded man.

The archbishop is standing beside the sword in the stone. Around him stand all the great men of Britain, and around them, packing the whole churchyard and the highway beyond it, jostle the people of London.

One by one the earls and lords and knights step up onto the plinth. They grunt and strain and yell and spit on their palms, they growl and crack their bones and curse: but not one of them can shift the sword in the stone.

“Sir Ector tells us his squire Arthur can do it,” the archbishop says.

“I swear it,” says my father.

“Prove it!” shout one hundred knights, and they're none too friendly.

“Show us, Arthur,” the archbishop says to me.

So I step up onto the plinth for the third time. I know what I have to do. I gaze at the sword until the stamping earls and the hooting lords and the whistling knights and all the people of London seem to fall away from me, and there is a great space around me. I stare until there's nothing else in the world except for the sword and me…

First they gasp, the earls and lords and knights, like a hundred swords cutting the cold air; then for a moment they're silent, and then they all begin to shout. They're angry, they argue.

But look! The hooded man is stepping out of the crowd of townspeople. I didn't even know he was here.

He works his way through the throng and steps up onto the plinth beside the archbishop and me.

“A boy!” he calls out, and his grand, dark voice rings around the
crowd. “A boy who can pull this sword from the stone, when all you grown men, you great men cannot. This seems like a miracle!” The hooded man paused. “And that's what Christians call it. A miracle!”

The tide of voices rises; it swells and rolls around the churchyard; then it ebbs again.

The hooded man raises his right hand. “I have helped four kings of Britain,” he calls out. “Listen carefully!

“As soon as King Uther saw Ygerna, he burned with passion for her, and he followed her and Duke Gorlois into Cornwall. On the same night Gorlois was killed, I changed Uther's appearance, so that he looked exactly like Ygerna's husband. In every part of his body. Then Uther went to Ygerna in her chamber—in the fortress at Tintagel. And that night Ygerna conceived a child.”

“Impossible!” one knight shouts.

“Rubbish!”

“Prove it!”

“Do you disbelieve your own king?” the hooded man asks. “Many men here heard Uther's dying words. ‘I have a son who was and will be.' That's what your king told you. ‘I give my son God's blessing. Let him claim my crown.'”

The hooded man glares at all the earls, lords and knights. “You're blinded by your own ambition,” he shouts. “Your jealousy! Listen to me! Ygerna gave birth to a son and, as he promised, King Uther entrusted that boy to me. He gave him to me, wrapped in gold cloth, on the day he was born.

“I know what you do not and see what you cannot,” the hooded man calls out. “Nothing in the world is impossible, but there's always a price. I gave King Uther his heart's desire, but he
never saw his son again. Ygerna has never seen her son again. I found him foster parents, a knight and his wife who were loyal to the king, strict and kind. They had a young son of their own who was almost three, and his mother weaned him and fed Ygerna's baby with her own milk. But I never told them whose child they were fostering.

“This foster father, this good knight, stands here before you,” the hooded man calls out. “So does his firstborn son. Sir Ector! Sir Kay!”

Now the hooded man turns toward me, and inclines his head. He opens the palm of his right hand. “King Uther's son! Ygerna's son!” he declares, and his voice is as powerful and thunder. “Arthur! The trueborn king of all Britain.”

Many of the townsfolk begin to clap and cheer, but most of the knights are shaking their heads.

“What if he is?” one man yells.

“A boy king?”

“Never!”

“Against the Saxons?”

The hooded man's voice rises again over the restless crowd. “I told King Uther I would come for his son. And I tell you all, you men of Britain, I tell you all: Arthur's time has come!”

L
AST NIGHT WAS TWELFTH NIGHT.

First we hoisted the last of the Yuletide logs onto the fire, and pulled down all the holly and ivy, the rosemary and bay, and laid them on it. Then we asked Nain to tell us the story she always tells on Twelfth Night, about another fire and another time.

When my mother and her brothers were children, they set fire to the haybarn, and their father, the dragon, had to rescue them.

“Right inside the barn Helen was,” said Nain, “and close to the flames. She was poppy-cheeked, her eyeballs were hot, and she was down on her knees, crying out the words and sounds.”

“What sounds?” I asked.

“The old ones,” my grandmother said, “for fire to swallow fire.”

“Helen thought she could put out the fire with words?” exclaimed my father.

“She did.”

“She was wrong,” my father said.

“She was right,” said Nain, “and maybe she would have done if the flames had been less hungry. But it was too late. They roared and ate up all the hay.”

After Nain's story, Hum played the pipe and banged the tabor and we all danced, we drank and sang. Then my father announced
that Lord Stephen had asked me to be his new squire, and everyone cheered.

Not Gatty, though. When I grinned at her, she lowered her eyes.

Most people drank so much ale they could scarcely stagger out of the hall. Will and Dutton were the last to leave, on all fours, snorting and mooing and baaing.

“It smells like snow,” my father said, and he bolted the door. Christmastide had come to an end.

Serle and Sian and I shook hands with our parents and Nain. We asked God to keep us safe while we slept. Then we curled up by the fire.

“I wish…” said Sian, and she yawned.

“What do you wish?” I whispered after a while.

Sian didn't reply. All evening she'd spitfired around the hall. But the moment she stopped and lay down, my little sister fell asleep.

I was wide awake, though. While Nain and Serle came to the crossing-place between waking and sleep, my head and heart were still busy with all that has been, and what is to come.

Tanwen! She wasn't with us in the hall, singing and dancing. Surely my father will let her stay here at Caldicot, and her baby with her. I must ask Serle about this. I can understand why Sir William wanted me to be taken away from Gortanore, but Serle's not married and Tanwen's not married…

Grace will be sad as well when Sir William tells her…When we sat up in the tree, we talked and talked, and Grace took my arm, and she said she'd never marry Serle and it would be all right if we
were betrothed. She asked me to try and find out my parents' plans, and now I have…

I don't like Sir William, and I never will. He's a bully. He slaps Lady Alice and makes her manage the day-work and do all the accounts…

She's right to be afraid of him. She knows he murdered my mother's husband…

Poor Lady Alice! She only found out after she married Sir William. Whom could she talk to? Her own mother and father were dead and she was an only child. She couldn't talk to Tom or Grace: Sir William was their own father.

So she told me. Up on Tumber Hill, where the wolf-wind could tear at her words as soon as it heard them, and rip them into pieces.

“Sir William murdered a young man,” she said. “He buried him in the forest.”

There! I have written it down. My third sorrow! Sir William is a murderer! My own father is man-slaughterer.

I haven't told anyone and I never will, because of my promise to Lady Alice. I nearly told my father, though.

My father says I must go to Gortanore before Easter. He says it's time Sir William and I talked to each other as father and son. But I'm my mother's son as well. No matter what, I will find out who she is before I go to Lord Stephen.

“Dear God,” I said under my breath, “in the wilderness of the night and the night of my fears, in my fears of the unknown, be my companion!”

Beside the fire, Tempest and Storm stirred, and then they began to growl. And then I heard the sheep in the fold: They were baaing and squealing.

I leaped up and the hounds leaped up.

“Serle!” I said. “The sheep!”

Serle began to gabble. He was drowned in sleep.

“The sheep!” I said more loudly, and I shook my brother's shoulder. Then I stepped into my boots and unbolted the hall door.

It was snowing! Large, soft flakes. A skyful of feathers, swaying and settling under the wide eye of the moon.

All December was iron-hard; ice covered the pond and Jack Frost stalked through the manor almost every night. But this was the first snowfall of the winter and I ran out into it, joyful and fearful.

Gatty was already there, standing beside the fold. And all the sheep were jammed against each other, mewling and wailing.

Gatty pointed.

At her feet, there was blood on the snow. A mouthful of wool. A track where something heavy had just been dragged away.

“They got what they came for,” Gatty said.

“A whole sheep!” I exclaimed.

“Wolves help themselves,” said Gatty. “We can't do nothing.”

That's not what Tempest and Storm thought, though. They ran away through the snow towards the forest, barking.

“Stands to reason,” said Gatty. “If we're hungry, them wolves are hungry.”

“Where is everyone?” I cried. “I couldn't wake Serle.”

“Ale-sleep!” said Gatty, and she looked at me in the moonlight. “Arthur,” she said. “Will you remember?”

“What?”

“Harold and Brice,” said Gatty.

“Of course.”

“And Sian on that ice.”

“I know,” I said. “And you wearing the armor. It's always us.”

“You're going,” said Gatty.

“Yes,” I said quietly.

“Can you walk there?” Gatty asked.

“Of course!” I said. “It's not oversea. Not like Jerusalem.”

“You said we'd go to Ludlow Fair.”

“Oh Gatty!”

Hundreds of snow pearls were shining in Gatty's curls. And they kept settling on her long eyelashes.

“You promised,” she said.

“We'll go before Easter,” I said. “I promise you. All the stalls there! The criers and the crowds. And the freak show! That's worth being beaten for, any time.”

“What about the stream then?” Gatty said.

“That too. We'll walk upstream towards Wistanstow.”

Gatty lowered her head. “It's all there is,” she said in a dead voice.

I looked at the blood. The falling snow. I listened to the terrified sheep.

“I'll tell my father you drove the wolves off,” I said. “You and me.”

“It doesn't make no difference,” Gatty mumbled.

I took both her hands. “What about Jankin, then?” I asked.

Gatty shrugged.

“He still wants to be betrothed, doesn't he?”

Gatty nodded. “It's Lankin,” she said sadly.

“Oh, Gatty!” I said.

And under the moon and her green halo, we reached out and embraced.

H
E'S GREEN,” SAYS THE SPADE-FACED KNIGHT.

“Then he needs your support,” the hooded man replies.

“He's never spilt blood, has he?” asked the Knight of the Black Anvil.

“Nothing but milk,” replies the copper-colored knight.

“That's not true,” says Arthur-in-the-stone. “I killed a man.”

“You?” jeers the copper knight. “What with? A bunch of feathers?”

“First with an elm branch and then with his own sword.”

“Nonsense!” says the spade-faced knight.

“He's just a child,” scoffs the Knight of the Black Anvil.

“And you are the same men King Uther trusted?” the hooded man demands. “Three times Arthur has pulled the sword from the stone, and still you deny him. This boy is King Uther's trueborn son.”

Now the huge crowd of townspeople surrounding the earls and lords and knights begins to cheer. They wave. They brandish cudgels and sharpened sticks. They stamp on the ground.

“The king!” they shout. “Arthur the king!”

“This is God's will,” the archbishop proclaims, and he raises his crucifix.

Hearing this, the townspeople cheer more loudly. “Arthur!”
they shout. “Crown Arthur!” And they begin to shuffle towards the knights, shaking their cudgels and holding up their sticks.

“All you knights are armed with swords and shields,” the hooded man calls out. “Are you going to use them against your own people?”

“Have faith!” declares the archbishop. “This is a matter of faith!”

“Is that what you're going to do?” the hooded man demands.

“Arthur!” the crowd insists. “Arthur the king!”

“I warn you,” the hooded man says. “For each man you kill, a dozen will spring up. They will overwhelm you.”

Now the earls and lords and knights turn to one another. They begin to talk, and argue…

Quietly, I slipped out of my window seat. In the stone cell of my writing-room, I got down onto my right knee and closed my eyes. I folded into myself, quiet and compact as a nut, still cradling my warm obsidian between my hands. For a long time I waited.

“Arthur my king!”

“I swear my allegiance.”

“I will be your liege man.”

“Here and always.”

When I opened my eyes again, all the great men of Britain, earls and lords and knights, were kneeling in front of me: brave men and bullies, shrewd men, blunt men and the woolly-headed, loyal men, honest men, the unjust and grasping, and the men who stop at nothing— liars, man-slaughterers.

Five crimson eagles fly for me and the purple lion roars for me, three greyhounds bark for me, and a swarm of tiddlers, silver and rose, swims for me. Seven bright stars shine for me.

“You have all sworn oaths,” I say in a clear voice, “and I swear to you before Christ the Lord I will be loyal to you. I will be just to rich and poor alike. I will root out evil wherever I see it. I will lead you by serving you and serve you by leading you as long as I live.”

Then I turn to the archbishop. “Your Grace,” I say, “I have not seen my own mother since the day I was born. Will you send for Queen Ygerna and bring her here for my coronation?”

The archbishop inclines he head. “As Christ the Lord loved his own mother,” he proclaims, “it shall be so. And Christ the Lord will guide you.”

“Your own blood will lead you,” the hooded man calls out. “The nine spirits will nourish you.”

Then he raises his right hand, and sweeps back his floppy hood. It is Merlin! Merlin is the hooded man!

But of course! The same slateshine eyes; the same powerful, deep voice. How can I not have recognized him? Merlin! You gave me my wonderful obsidian, my seeing stone, and you've been there in my stone all the time, waiting for me to find you. It was you who counseled King Vortigern to drain the pool and you who changed King Uther's appearance; on the day I was born, you delivered me to Sir Ector and his wife. And it was you who promised King Uther, my blood-father, that you would watch over me and come for me.

“Merlin!” I cry, and I reach out towards him.

Merlin smiles and unsmiles. “Arthur!” he says. “The king! But what kind of king? No, I haven't finished with you yet. I've only just begun!”