Lancelot Read online

  Still, a gift from the High King of Britain was no small thing. Benesek might not have been impressed but I was. I had not realized the Lady was held in such esteem. Why then did she live on a windswept island which hung off Britannia’s coast like a thread off a cloak’s hem, and not in some great hall? Or even one of the old Roman palaces which I had heard were still to be found in the land, some of them boasting wall paintings and deep baths which filled with hot water gushing from the ground.

  ‘Truth to tell, Lady, I’ll be glad to be rid of him,’ Baralis admitted, scowling at the bull. ‘I’ve had easier passengers, I can tell you. Damned beast shitting all over my deck.’

  The Lady smiled. ‘Thank you, Baralis. And how is King Uther?’ she asked, at which Benesek, Edern, Madern and the other men’s ears pricked up. The boys crowded close, too. Melwas and Agga at the forefront, hoping to be noticed even by a sailor such as Baralis because of his association with lords of Britain and the High King himself.

  Baralis smiled and there was a blood-lust in that smile which did not become the sailor. ‘The old dragon still breathes fire, thank the gods,’ he said. ‘Just three moons ago he killed a Saxon king in single combat. Took his head off with one blow. Clean off.’ Baralis frowned and coughed into his hand. ‘So men say,’ he said, uneasy now about talking of such things in front of his host, and after that he spoke no more of it, much to my disappointment. I would have listened to such tales all the day and night, even from Baralis, who was hardly one of Britannia’s famous bards.

  ‘A fine beast,’ the ship’s captain said, coming back to the gift, which was lowing now, pulling against its handler so that I feared the ring would be torn from its suffering nose. Head down, the bull lurched forward and slammed into the man holding the rope, throwing him several feet to land hard on the rock.

  The Dumnonian warriors surrounding the animal panicked, not knowing how to calm the bull and doubtless horrified by the prospect of having to slaughter a gift barely given. Quite aside from the insult, the omen in that would be bad and everyone knew it.

  The Lady pushed her hood back, and her pale face shone and her braided hair was bright as spun gold in the grey day. She approached the furious creature and one of Uther’s men told her to go no closer, putting himself between her and the snorting, raging gift. I did not see the face which the Lady showed that man but it made him step aside with a clatter of shield and spear and a palm raised in apology.

  ‘Hush now, my proud, strong friend,’ the Lady told the bull, whose breath shot from his tortured nose in long plumes amongst the sheeting rain. ‘You will have a good life here with us,’ she said, then whispered other things and pressed herself against the bull’s flank and stroked its neck and poll between the sharp horns. And if I had not seen what she did with my own eyes I would have thought one of her warriors had stepped up and slammed his sword hilt down on the bull’s head, as we sometimes did to daze cattle before cutting their throats, so still and calm had the creature become. Yet she had done it with mere words and touch and it raised a hum from those gathered on the shore, particularly from the sailors and Uther’s men, and even her own men and the boys, who all saw witchcraft in it. It would have been near enough impossible not to. Nor did it help that her girls stood there grinning and proud where the rest of us were uneasy.

  ‘I will make an offering to the gods and ask that they continue to favour King Uther. To give him the strength to continue leading his people against those who threaten his land,’ the Lady said, still standing beside the placid bull and stroking its back. ‘And I shall send a gift back with you for the king.’

  ‘It will be my honour, Lady,’ Baralis said.

  But the Lady was not looking at the Dobhran’s captain now. She took her hand from the bull and stood tall, for some reason pulling her cowl back onto her head even though her golden hair was soaked through. And at that same moment a murmur rose from the warriors of Karrek because they too had seen something. Or someone.

  ‘What’s he doing here?’ Benesek muttered to himself, sliding his hand up his spear’s shaft until thumb and forefinger touched the wet iron of the socket.

  The girls were whispering amongst themselves and Melwas, Agga and some of the other boys were wide-eyed and slack-jawed as they stared at the man whom no one had seen until that moment, though he must have come ashore on one of the tenders with the Dobhran’s cargo. Behind him stood a skinny, fair-haired boy who was bent beneath a sack on his back, which he gripped in raw-looking hands.

  Seeing that he was no longer the centre of anyone’s attention, not least the Lady’s, Baralis mumbled something about needing to make sure his men had unloaded an amphora of honey, a gift to the girls of Karrek from Lord Gwalather’s wife, and strode away, growling at a grey-bearded sailor to have care with the barrel he was rolling to the store hut.

  The Lady and the newcomer, whose sudden appearance had men fingering the charms hanging at their necks or touching iron blades, now stood face to face. Not that any of us could see much of the Lady’s face now she was hooded again. And perhaps that was the idea.

  ‘It has been a long time,’ she said. The rain hissed and the sea breathed and the gulls cried far above in the wan sky.

  ‘Perhaps it seems so,’ the newcomer said.

  He was not a tall man. Neither was he broad nor built like a warrior used to sword and shield work, as were the men of Karrek Loos yn Koos. Yet he did not look a weak man, for his bare arms, covered in strange symbols which had been etched into the skin with blue dye, were knotty with sinew and muscle, and I suspected he could cause even a big man harm with that gnarled ash staff he held in his left hand. His dark-skinned face was set with quick eyes and his moustaches reached down to the point of the black beard which wisped from his chin like a goat’s. But the hair on his head receded so far that it looked like it had been shaved from ear to ear in the style of the tonsures worn by the Christian monks who had sometimes visited my father’s hall in Benoic. His remaining hair was dark and stood in tufts despite the rain.

  ‘Why are you here?’ This from Benesek who had stepped forward and thrown that question into the heavy silence. It was what Pelleas would have done were he here, for there was something about this man that troubled the Lady, and her warriors did not like this. Madern’s granite face was all scowl and I noticed that Edern’s knuckles were white as bone on his spear shaft.

  The tonsured man, who was barefooted and dressed in black trews, a sleeveless tunic of black wool and nothing more, leant his ash staff towards Benesek but kept those lively eyes of his on the Lady. ‘Do not concern yourself, Benesek. Does a woodlouse burden itself with matters of the moon and stars?’ The warrior reddened but held his tongue as the man stared at the Lady, awaiting her words and hers alone.

  After what seemed an age she nodded and rain spilled from the oiled hood. ‘You may stay,’ she said, ‘but you will leave with the Dobhran.’

  The man accepted this with a bow, then lifted his staff for the benefit of his fair-haired slave, who swung the sack off his shoulder onto the rock and stood straight with a grimace, pushing those chafed hands into the small of his back.

  ‘Madern, show our guests where they will sleep tonight,’ the Lady said, asking him to do it because Benesek was still smouldering at the insult he had borne in front of everyone.

  ‘Shall I not stay in the keep?’ the dark-skinned man asked. He glanced over at me and there was a flash of something like recognition in his eyes. Then he looked back at the Lady.

  ‘You shall not,’ she told him.

  The man shrugged. ‘It is cold up there anyway,’ he said. ‘No life in Roman stone.’ He gestured with his staff up at the tower which crowned the mount. ‘You might be closer to the gods up there, but give me a fish-stinking driftwood hut and the company of killers,’ he said, flicking a hand towards Benesek, who muttered something filthy under his breath. ‘Oh but there was a time,’ the man said wistfully.

  ‘When you have told me what you came
here to say, you will leave with Baralis,’ the Lady confirmed. ‘And you will sleep down here on the land’s edge.’ The man nodded in resignation and with that the Lady looked over at me. ‘I am sorry about your hawk, Lancelot,’ she said. I just nodded, wondering how she had known. Perhaps one of the girls had seen Guinevere and me set the wicker basket adrift and told the Lady, who now turned her back on us all and ushered her girls up the path to the keep.

  Agga took the job of showing Uther’s men and the bull to the grassy slope which was the closest Karrek had to pasture, while Baralis and those of his crew who would not be sleeping aboard the Dobhran followed Madern to the hut where they would spend the night. Better than sleeping on the Otter’s open deck in the rain.

  ‘Are you coming?’ Madern called back to the man with the ash staff who was still standing on the rain-glistened rocks, looking at me. As though waiting for me to do or say something. As though we knew each other. As though we were old friends.

  I said nothing and did nothing but just returned the man’s stare.

  ‘Your Lady says I must sleep down here,’ he said, looking at me but talking to Madern, ‘but any fool can see it is not night yet. At the very least I deserve a wine skin, having spent the better part of a day aboard that leaking pail with that witless Baralis. Come, Oswine,’ he said and set off after the Lady, and his yellow-haired slave swung the sack onto his back without hesitation, as sure as his master that none of the spear- and sword-armed men standing there in the rain would move to stop them. And neither did they.

  ‘Who is that man?’ I asked Benesek, watching him go and watching his slave Oswine, too, because I had never seen a real Saxon before and this one was not the hulking, blood-drinking, pelt-wearing fiend of bard song.

  ‘You don’t know?’ Benesek said, pulling in his chin. ‘Still, why would you? Though I’ll wager you’ll wish you never did know him by the time he’s back on board the Otter.’ He hawked and spat a wad of phlegm onto the wet rock where his spear butt rested. ‘That, lad,’ he said, nodding after the man who was now squawking at poor Oswine to hurry up with the sack, which was not much smaller than he was, ‘that is the only man in Britain who Uther listens to. And some say that’s only because Uther fears the bastard shrivelling his cock to the size of a maggot if he doesn’t.’ He shook his head. ‘Uther fears no man. Not Saxon, not Irish. If you ask me, he keeps that fiend around because he was the one who somehow got Igraine to let Uther into her bed.’

  ‘But who is he?’ I asked, frustrated at being the only person on Karrek who did not know.

  ‘That mad-eyed bastard is a druid, lad,’ Benesek said, ‘one of the last who can still speak with the gods. His name is Merlin.’

  The next night was the first time I had been allowed into the main chamber of Karrek’s keep. Outside it was still raining, endless veils which swept across the island in gusts, one after another like waves. While not cold enough for furs and gloves, it was a blustery, pitch-dark autumn night which had Baralis’s Dobhran rocking violently at her mooring so that the poor sailors who had been left aboard to guard the ship, if they were not throwing their guts over the side, must have been sick with envy of their fellows who enjoyed the hospitality of the Lady of Karrek.

  The keep had been built by the Romans long ago at the western extremity of the Saxon shore fortifications, and no doubt it had been used as a vantage point from which to look out across the Dividing Sea. And though the neat Roman stone and brickwork had crumbled and fallen away here and there and the repairs had been made with crudely shaped stones, timber and wattle, the rain only spat through in a few places, which was a testament to the skill of those long-dead Roman builders. And now the main chamber of the keep was warm and golden with flame-glow and stinking of men’s wet woollen cloaks and sodden leather boots and smoke from the hearth which billowed up to the rafters, questing out into the night where it could, and the dried herbs – sage, basil and mint – which hung from those smoke-blackened beams. It stank of bodies too, because it was crammed with them, for Pelleas and the Greek merchant Paulus had returned from their travels just as the light leached from the sky above the western sea.

  ‘You must have smelled the mead!’ Madern had called to Pelleas as the warrior came ashore, handing his shield, spear and helmet to me because it would be my job to polish and grease them against sea air and salt spray, though I could see he had already scraped the new rust off his gear. It did seem an unlikely coincidence that Pelleas had followed so soon in the Dobhran’s wake.

  ‘You think I’d let you gluttons feast on Lord Leodegan’s pork and rinse your beards with his wine without me?’ Pelleas growled back, and all the warriors of Karrek greeted him with good-humoured insults and a deal of back-slapping, because men did not always return from such trips. It turned out Pelleas’s return was indeed no coincidence, for he and Paulus had been moored in Tintagel bay awaiting a favourable wind when the Dobhran slid past and Pelleas had recognized Lord Leodegan’s ship.

  ‘I told the Greeks that there was a good chance that the Otter would be putting in here,’ he said to me as I set to work rubbing unspun sheep’s wool along the blade of his long sword, ‘what with Leodegan’s daughter living here now. And truth be told they liked the sound of a feast as much as any men would.’ He had hung up his cloak, which dripped onto the rushes, and was busy pulling off his filthy tunic to change into a better one for the feast. His muscled torso was crosshatched with scars which shone white by the candlelight and I wondered how many fights Pelleas had been in. ‘You took my advice, then,’ he said, glancing round the room.

  He had told me to kill the sparhawk because a ruined hawk was no use to anyone, least of all itself. ‘She died before I could do it,’ I said. Not a lie exactly.

  ‘And my advice about the girl? Guinevere. I hope you’ve been steering well clear of her, Lancelot.’

  The way he had dismissed the hawk made me want to defy him now. ‘I have spent every day with her. We are friends,’ I said, which made the warrior sigh as he examined his new tunic to make sure it was clean enough.

  ‘You’re a fool, boy,’ he said.

  And maybe I was. Still, it felt good having Pelleas back. I missed my hawk, and other than Guinevere, Pelleas was my only friend on the island, even if he did think me a fool. So, we walked through the rain up to the Lady’s keep together, towards the sound of laughter and song and the smell of woodsmoke, and I hoped that Guinevere would be there.

  But she was not there. None of the girls were. The first person I saw was Benesek, who, wine jug in hand, was threatening the boys with a beating that would rouse the gods from their sleep should any of them embarrass the Lady in front of her guests.

  ‘Chin up, Lancelot,’ Pelleas said. ‘You think the Lady would risk one of these Greeks taking a fancy to young Jenifry or Erwana?’

  I had not realized my disappointment was so obvious.

  ‘Worse,’ he said, waving his empty horn cup which he had brought with him, ‘imagine we caught one of King Uther’s men in some dark corner with one of them.’ His brows lifted. ‘I’d have to kill the man and then we’d be in a tangle.’

  ‘I know,’ I said, trying to shrug it off as if it meant nothing to me who was there and who was not.

  Having pushed his way through the crowd to us, Benesek now filled Pelleas’s cup with wine the deep red of heart blood. To my surprise, instead of drinking it himself, Pelleas offered the cup to me. ‘To help you get over the heartache, lad,’ he said, ‘which you won’t escape, being handsome and young and stubborn and a bloody fool.’

  He had barely settled into his land legs and yet he was letting me drink from his cup before he had slaked his own thirst. The generosity of the gesture was not lost on me, and I remembered seeing my father do something similar after a hunt, offering his own silver-chased cup to a man who had just come of age to join his retinue and fight in his war band. And so now I said the words that that young man had said before wetting his lips with my father’s wine.


  ‘Thank you, lord.’

  Pelleas and Benesek looked at each other and burst into laughter, which had other men in the press turning to see what was so amusing. Pelleas leant towards me. ‘I’m not your lord, lad,’ he said, lowering his voice to spare me more embarrassment. ‘One day you’ll find yourself serving a lord, I’ve no doubt. A proper lord if you’re lucky. One who knows how to win a fight. Or better still avoid one.’

  ‘And one who rewards his men,’ Benesek said into his cup.

  ‘Aye, that too,’ Pelleas said with a hard eye and a firm nod. He gestured at me to drink. ‘And even if I was a lord, I’d be needing fighters, not swimmers.’

  Benesek grinned and tipped his own cup towards me. ‘If he fights as well as he swims and runs, he’ll be serving King Uther himself and we’ll be the meat in his shieldwall,’ he said.

  They laughed again and I felt like a dolt. Of course Pelleas was no lord. And even if he were, or even a chief in his own right, what service could I offer other than scrubbing the rust off his ringmail and blades? And yet I wanted to be useful. Not just useful, I wanted to become a warrior. I wanted to learn how to fight. The gods know I was never going to make a falconer.

  Benesek’s dark eyebrows lifted. ‘Shouldn’t we be calling him lord?’ He grinned at me. ‘Aren’t you a prince of Benoic, lad? My father was a tanner.’

  ‘Let’s not have any of that talk,’ Pelleas growled at his sword-brother. ‘Lancelot already takes little enough notice of my advice. About hawks or women or the best way to get rust off a blade. I don’t need you putting ideas in his head.’

  Benesek winked at me. ‘Still, it’s time the lad started his training, if you ask me.’ Beads of sweat were bursting from his shaven head. ‘Or would the Lady have him run wild until he’s a grown man?’

  Pelleas shrugged. ‘All I know is that I came up here to drink, which I can’t do while you’re still holding my cup, boy,’ he said, gesturing at me to drink.

  I breathed in the wine’s perfume: oak and stewed fruit and some far-away land and also, somehow, my father. I drank, thinking how different this experience was from that day after the race when the Lady had given me a long-stemmed cup of her own wine, which had tasted of nothing, my nostrils being clogged with blood. But this wine was like some intoxicating nectar and I craved another sip and so drank again, this time keeping some of the wine in my mouth, swishing my tongue through it. Ripe berries. Worn leather. Wood and earth.