Lancelot Page 13

  Guinevere slipped through the gap and I did not think she was even going to say goodbye but then she stopped, half cloaked in darkness, and pulled at her finger. She held a fist out to me and nodded, so I reached out and our hands met and she put something in mine. Something cool.

  I turned my hand over and opened it and there was a simple silver ring. I remembered having seen it flash like fish scales underwater when Guinevere had reached for me, trying to claw her way back from the dark depths which hungered to swallow her.

  ‘Tomorrow you can show me that silly tree,’ she said.

  I nodded but she had already gone.

  For three days after that, Guinevere and I roamed the island together from sunrise to sunset, the sparhawk perched on my arm for much of the time because I did not want to undo all the hard work of manning her by letting her forget me. But I knew she was dying. Guinevere knew it too.

  ‘It is crueller to let her suffer,’ Guinevere said, gently stroking the bound and broken wing. It was a grey, damp morning and we were sitting on the rocks outside the keep. There was little point taking the hawk to wait for prey in the woods. She was no longer interested. Would barely turn her head when a rock dove broke from the trees and clapped into the sky.

  ‘She does not want to die,’ I said, gently running my finger over the dark bars of her chest plumage. I could feel her little bones sharp beneath the feathers.

  Guinevere frowned at me and I frowned back.

  ‘Maybe tomorrow,’ I said. She nodded, understanding.

  For days now the bird’s mutes had been small and dry and hard where once she had flung them across the room, streaking the floor rushes to Pelleas’s dismay. Now, she hardly ate and was half her healthy weight and did not even care who touched her, which was as good a sign as any that she was dying. Her spite and her mistrust, that fire that used to light her amber eye, was gone. I knew it, but I carried her on my arm anyway, hoping beyond hope that her fierce nature would overcome her sorry condition. That somehow, some day, I would unbind her and slip the jesses and she would spread those broad, blunt wings and streak after some prey, fast and low and nimble as the breeze.

  But the next day I did not go up to the keep to fetch Guinevere, because my sparhawk was dead. Before I went to bed the previous night I had managed to get her to eat a sliver of beef heart and had foolishly thought it a sign that she was recovering. In truth like a condemned man she was taking her last meal and I woke to find her lying lifeless in her basket, her spindly yellow legs sticking straight up and her body stiff and cold beneath my fingers.

  I cried. Though she was just a hawk, I cried until no more tears would come and a hollow weariness swirled in me like sickness.

  I sat holding her a long time and eventually I carefully unwound the linen binding, because I wanted her to at least look like a hawk again before I placed her back in that basket which I had carried all the way from Benoic, and fastened the latch on the little door. I was glad Pelleas was not back from his travels yet.

  Told you this would happen, I heard him say even in his absence. Should’ve killed the hawk yourself rather than watch her endure all that. What good is a bird with one wing? Tell me that, Lancelot.

  ‘What will you do with it?’ a real voice said and I turned to see Guinevere. I had not gone up to the keep and so she had come down to the shore.

  I shrugged. ‘I don’t know. Bury her in the basket,’ I said.

  ‘You could set the basket adrift,’ she said. ‘It will be as if she is going on one last journey. We could go up to the cliff to watch until her basket vanishes beyond sight.’ She was serious and solemn and beautiful.

  I nodded. It was as good an idea as any and so we walked down the rocks, both holding the basket, and waded into the retreating tide together, the gulls shrieking above us because they thought we were setting a crab trap. When the water was up to our waists we looked at each other and Guinevere nodded and we let the basket go.

  ‘Goodbye, hawk,’ I whispered, sorry for having wished she were my father’s white gyrfalcon instead of what she was: a crooked-tailed, furious she-hawk who had been manned by an inept boy.

  ‘Come on,’ Guinevere said, already climbing out of the surf onto the rocks while I still stood there watching the basket bob amongst the small waves, wondering where the sea would take my hawk. Thinking that perhaps she would drift all the way across the Dividing Sea back to Armorica. And that she might return there, to the land of my people, long before I ever did.

  By the time we got up to the cliff top the rain was sweeping across the sea like a black veil and we soon realized that it would not be quite as we had imagined it. The basket looked so small from that height, and the sea was grey and the day was grey and the wicker itself was old and dirty, so that after no time at all we could not be sure if what we saw was the basket or just a trick of the currents.

  Still, Guinevere sat there with me, the rain blowing into our faces, until long after either of us had claimed to catch a glimpse of the basket on its journey across the rain-dappled sea.

  ‘Hear that?’ Guinevere said, then stood and walked closer to the edge. Unafraid of the wind-buffeted heights and the precipitous drop, she leant over the edge to find the source of the sound she had heard. Bleating. Terror-inspired bleating. ‘A sheep,’ she said, as I joined her on the ledge, swiping rain from my eyes. ‘A lamb not long ago by the looks. Poor thing must have fallen from there,’ she said, pointing to a grass ledge off to the right.

  ‘It was lucky to survive the drop,’ I said.

  ‘It will die if we don’t help it.’ She looked at me. ‘It will starve, Lancelot.’

  ‘You want to break your neck for a sheep?’ I said.

  ‘We’ll go back. Find one of the men. Edern will come, or that big one with the long moustaches.’

  ‘Benesek,’ I said, then shook my head. ‘We don’t need them.’ I looked back down at the pitiful creature and wondered how long it had stood there facing the cliff face, its rump towards the sea which spilled over its hooves now the tide was in. ‘Wait here,’ I said and was already running across the rain-slick rock which was warm beneath my feet, then up the steep grassy slope and down towards the north side of the island and the hut I shared with Pelleas.

  I was slower on the way back to Guinevere because the rope which I had wound round my waist and looped over my shoulder was heavy and long. It was old too, and green with ancient dried seaweed because it had long been used as an anchor rope, and I did not know how strong it was but was sure it would take the sheep’s weight. My weight, too.

  ‘If you fall you’ll break your legs or your back. Or your neck. You might even die,’ Guinevere said.

  ‘I won’t fall,’ I said. Halfway down, fingers and toes seeking what purchase they could in the rock face, I looked up at the wide, blue-green eyes peering down at me. Guinevere lay on her tummy so that just her head stuck out over the ledge, rain dripping from the end of her nose and from her black hair which hung loose around her pale face.

  ‘Or you may end up stuck down there with that sheep,’ she called. Was she smiling? I could not tell for sure. ‘At least you won’t starve.’

  Lose a hawk and gain a sheep. That was some bad bargain.

  Down I went. Faster than Edern or Benesek ever could. Faster than the rainwater which coursed down the rock in little rivulets, the sheep bleating as if I did not already know it was there and afraid, its new fleece lank with salty sea spray and fear sweat. She was a ewe, less than two years old, and when I set foot on the ledge she backed away until her right hind shank was waving above the breaking surface of the sea. She scuttled back onto solid ground, baaing at me as though it were my fault that she was in this situation.

  ‘Rope!’ I called up, and a moment later the rope whipped down, snaking against the cliff because Guinevere was holding on to the other end. For all her fear the ewe stood while I passed the rope under her belly, tying it over her crops.

  ‘Keep still,’ I told her, hopin
g that Guinevere would let go of the rope quickly enough should the ewe bolt and leap off that ledge into the sea. Then I was climbing, hands and feet finding the same familiar crevices again, up against the falling rain, ascending without thinking.

  ‘You climb like a cat,’ Guinevere said as I pulled myself over the ledge and stood straight, blowing onto my fingers which were chafed and aching from gripping the slippery rock. ‘Stop idling, then.’ She nodded at the rope which stretched from around her waist down over the cliff’s edge to the ewe, and so I stood in front of her and took hold of it and together we hauled back. Perhaps that little sheep was waterlogged but she was heavier than I had expected and took some heaving. Yet up she came, dangling on that old ship’s rope, striking the rock now and then and bleating and doubtless more confused than she had ever been.

  ‘Told you we did not need help,’ I said, untying the ewe. But then she tried to bolt before I had got the knot undone and I fell forward after her and her hind foot struck my head.

  ‘Lancelot!’ Guinevere yelled as the ewe fled off across the rocks, trailing the rope behind her.

  ‘It’s nothing,’ I said, though my vision was blurry as I got up on my feet and brushed the muck off my tunic.

  Then Guinevere laughed, which was quite something given that in the short time I had known her I had never seen her smile. But that laugh! Strong and wild and dauntless. Even my own embarrassment was carried off on it like a leaf in the wind, so that I felt myself grinning dumbly.

  Her face straightened and she gasped. ‘Oh,’ she said, walking towards me, ‘you poor thing.’

  I put a hand to my head and taking it away saw the blood on it. The ewe’s hoof had gouged the skin above my left eye.

  ‘It doesn’t hurt,’ I said, wiping the blood on my trews.

  Guinevere raised one dark eyebrow. ‘You may be a good climber, but you’re a bad liar,’ she said, then she leant towards me and kissed me on the lips. It was over almost before I could be sure it had happened, and we stood there facing each other, Guinevere with her head tilted to one side, as if waiting for me to say something.

  My tongue could find no words.

  ‘Thank you,’ she said. ‘For saving that poor animal.’

  ‘And look what I got for my trouble,’ I said, touching the cut above my eye, but my stomach was looping over itself, tying itself into a knot.

  Guinevere took her long hair in both hands and squeezed the rainwater out of it. ‘That was not all you got,’ she said.

  ‘No,’ I admitted, wishing the day was colder so that the breeze might chase the heat from my cheeks. ‘Thank you,’ I said.

  Guinevere laughed again though this time she covered her mouth with a hand, trying to stifle the sound, and I felt like a fool though I did not know why.

  ‘Oh, Lancelot! You mustn’t thank someone for kissing you,’ she said.

  I shrugged, frowning. I could still feel the kiss. More so than the gash in my head. I wanted to take a step and kiss her back, to experience that unfamiliar taste again. But my feet had somehow grown roots, sent them deep down into the rock itself, and I had no courage.

  ‘A ship,’ she said, looking past me. ‘See there!’

  I turned and looked west across the sea, sifting the murk until I saw, far away, the red sail and black hull.

  ‘He’s here,’ she said. ‘I was beginning to think he would never come.’

  ‘Who?’ I asked, knowing it could not be Pelleas, for the ship he had gone west in with the Greeks had two white sails and a more rounded hull. This red-sailed ship hugging the coast was low and sleek in the water.

  ‘My father,’ Guinevere said, walking back to the cliff edge. ‘That is the Dobhran. It means Otter in Irish. The High King himself gave it to my father.’

  ‘King Uther gave your father a ship?’ I asked in awe, blinking away rainwater and keeping my eyes on that red sail.

  There were some two hundred men who called themselves kings in Britannia. Some were powerful men with retinues of warriors and great halls and swathes of land rich in cattle and wheat and silver and tin. Others were men who could barely call on a dozen spears and owned little more than a pot to piss in, so Pelleas had told me, yet these sat at the top of some hill and crowed louder than they ought. But Uther, the High King of Britain, the Pendragon, was above them all. He was the power in the land. Had won that power with his own courage and the sword’s edge, and had raised himself above all the other so-called kings who bent the knee to him, accepting Uther’s hegemony.

  ‘The Pendragon is the only reason why Britannia is not overrun with Saxons, like a corpse buried under maggots,’ Pelleas had said, touching the iron of his blade to avert the evil of that image of a dying Britain. ‘But even Uther cannot live for ever.’

  ‘Your father knows the High King?’ I asked, watching Guinevere.

  ‘Of course,’ she said. ‘They sometimes hunt boar together. My father can throw a spear further than any man.’ She cast her own imaginary spear and watched it soar high over the cliff edge and down to the white water. ‘Though he always lets King Uther cast his spear first, of course,’ she said, turning back to me.

  I imagined a famous warrior like the Pendragon could throw his spear further than Lord Leodegan, whom I had never heard of before I met Guinevere, but I kept that thought to myself.

  ‘We should tell Lady Nimue that my father is here,’ Guinevere said. ‘She will want to prepare a welcome.’

  I nodded and together we ran through the rain.

  8

  Songs of Britain

  ‘WHICH ONE IS lord Leodegan?’ I asked Benesek, who, in Pelleas’s absence, commanded those fifteen Guardians of the Mount currently not off on some escort duty or carrying messages from their Lady to the lords of Britain and the parents of the children in her care.

  ‘Lord Leodegan?’ Benesek said. We were watching those coming ashore on tenders from the red-sailed ship anchored in the bay where it was deep enough for her hull. ‘None of ’em is Leodegan,’ he said. Like the other warriors he was dressed in his war gear. A breastplate of leather boiled in urine to harden it, leather greaves to protect his shins, and a steel helmet. He carried his round limewood shield, its bleached leather cover emblazoned with the Lady’s symbol, Karrek’s high keep perched on the round metal boss which represented the island itself. He wore his long sword on his back and carried a thick-shafted war spear whose blade was keen enough to cut the air. The men always dressed for battle when any sizeable ship came to the island, even if they recognized the vessel and knew it to be no threat, and I admit that I longed to own such war gear myself one day. I lusted after it.

  ‘Leodegan, ha!’ Benesek said, his long moustaches quivering with amusement. ‘High and mighty lords such as Leodegan don’t bother themselves by coming here, lad. They give us their brats and bastards and we turn them into fighters or,’ he said, nodding in the direction of Alana, ‘protect their virtue. Then, when cleverer people than me decide the time is right, we give ’em back.’ He shook his head. ‘No reason for lords such as Leodegan to come all the way down here to the arse end of Britain.’

  A big-bearded, leathery-skinned sailor approached the Lady on bandy legs long used to a ship’s roll. Sweeping the rain from his face, he inclined his head.

  ‘Lady,’ he said.

  ‘Welcome, Baralis,’ the Lady said, arms wide, her girls huddled behind her, hooded like she against the rain, though I was looking at Guinevere, whose straight face and tight lips spoke louder of her disappointment than tears could have done. I felt her avoiding my eye because she was embarrassed to have shared her joy at the prospect of her father coming, when it was clear Leodegan was still in his hall at Carmelide in northern Dumnonia.

  It was obvious that Baralis, the captain of Leodegan’s ship, was in awe of the woman standing before him, for he could barely look Lady Nimue in the eye as he paid the respects of his lord and master. The Lady returned the compliments and then, the formalities out of the way, made a thing of
looking over the captain’s shoulder towards the activity going on behind him.

  The ship’s cargo was being unloaded from the tenders by six or seven sun-browned sailors. Barrels and amphorae and baskets and sacks and even a terrified, rolling-eyed bull, which, being led by its nose ring, was surrounded by four sword-armed warriors whose shields, slung on their backs, bore a red dragon.

  We had watched amazed as that beast, almost the same size as the boat itself, had been rowed across the bay, like a king borne to some newly conquered realm.

  ‘Gifts from Lords Leodegan and Gwalather,’ Baralis said, sweeping an arm back towards the cargo.

  ‘And the bull?’ the Lady asked. It was a fine-looking beast and much needed on Karrek, because the one currently living on the island was a good few years older than me, by Pelleas’s reckoning, and had long since lost interest in the cows.

  ‘From the High King himself,’ Baralis said, standing a little taller with that declaration, which had a similar effect on the Lady’s warriors, for they were always eager for any news from the mainland, whether from Dumnonia or the kingdoms beyond such as Powys, Gwent and Gwynedd. That Baralis had come from Dumnonia’s northern coast meant he must have some tales to tell of happenings in Britain, and that was one thing, but talk of the High King was quite another.

  ‘The King is generous,’ the Lady said.

  ‘He is that, my lady,’ Baralis said, inclining his head again.

  Benesek, beside me, grunted. ‘The King should be generous,’ he said, the words escaping from the side of his mouth. ‘Needs us holding the hands of all these bloody Greeks who come to Tintagel to buy his tin.’

  That was true enough, for Uther needed silver to pay his warriors and buy the loyalty of other powerful kings. And merchants, be they Syrians or Franks or men from Armorica across the Dividing Sea, made Uther richer when they did not get themselves murdered and robbed by Dumnonians or Silurians or anybody else. That was if they had not already been killed by the Saxon pirates who thronged on Ynys Weith thick as gorse on the moor.