Lancelot Read online

  In front of me was Branok and in front of him a gap was opening, though there was no way to pass without taking off into the trees and getting snarled in the blackthorn brambles and gorse thickets.

  Down and down. Cascading. Coursing down the track like a mountain stream. Eyeing the ground for roots and stones. Kitto was on my heels now that we had been forced to slow, but I would leave him behind, and Branok too, as soon as the path widened.

  Boys slipped and slid on the loose, dry ground. Growled curses. Invoked gods. Then the trees thinned and more paths opened up and I tore off to the right of a big elm and did not slow but leaped off the edge of a hillock, landing and rolling and was on my feet again racing towards the sea.

  ‘Little shit!’ one of the boys yelled as I looked over my shoulder and saw that I had overtaken Branok, Florien and Hedrek, because those three had chosen a safer route. But I was flying across the goat-cropped grass, fleet and silent as the shadow of my hawk stooping from the soar.

  Another jump, this time down onto the stones of the shore, which clacked and moved underfoot, though my feet barely touched them. Agga led the pack now, with Melwas close behind, those two far out in front, leaping from boulder to sea-kissed boulder. Confident and unyielding both.

  Time enough to catch them, I knew, but first to pass those who were less than an arrow-shot ahead. Not that I needed to push for the lead yet, so early in the race and with more than two circuits still to run. But I was not one for tactics. There were boys to beat and so I would beat them.

  I saw Geldrin by his fair hair and was surprised at how far ahead of me he had got. He was fast and running well and I had been wrong to think he did not have it in him to compete with the others.

  Good for Geldrin, I thought, but then having leapt onto a large, flat rock he stopped. I saw why. Jago, who had been five spear-lengths ahead on that same rock, had turned back and now came at Geldrin, who seemed stuck there like a limpet. Jago gripped him by the shoulders and the next thing I saw, Jago was running again while Geldrin was thrashing in the surf.

  I did not stop to help Geldrin. The sea there thrashed itself white but Geldrin could swim well enough, and in no time I had caught up with Jago. He swerved towards me and swung a fist, but I ducked and he stumbled and then I was past him too and gaining on Goron.

  Up the bank and onto the grass again, and Goron knew I had the beating of him even if his pride had him fighting hard for a while, matching me for pace until I unleashed a burst of speed to put him out of his misery.

  ‘Win it, lad,’ he called after me, still running hard to stay ahead of Jago and the others.

  Up the feet-worn, dusty path and back into the woods, my eyes half blind in the dark after the golden day and the silver glare of the sea, so that I was not sure which boy was my next opponent. Whoever it was, he was blowing hard, not liking the uphill slog. Perhaps his chest burned with the effort. Perhaps the muscles in his thighs were fire and he wondered how he would keep up this pace for another two circuits of the Mount.

  I was only getting started. My breathing was smooth and measured and if anything my legs were warming to the task. My eyes were adjusting too and I saw that the puffing but dogged boy digging his way up through the trees ahead was Peran. Short legs and thick arms pumping. His hot, used-up breath in my nose now that I was on his heels.

  Sensing me, he veered into my path but I anticipated it and cut across his wake and overtook him on his left and after twenty paces I could no longer hear his incessant panting.

  It took me the whole of the next circuit to catch up with Agga, Jowan and Melwas. Those three were making light work of it still, biding their time, saving themselves for the third and final lap. At least, they were until Agga glanced over his shoulder and saw me. He must have told the others that I was upon them, because they all speeded up, their legs devouring the sloping ground on the Mount’s east side, goaded by the unthinkable: that they might be beaten by the youngest boy on the island. And by an outsider, too, for I did not train with them or eat with them or sleep in the round hut with them. They had not minded me racing, because they never imagined I might actually compete. My being on their heels now shocked them. It angered them. And the only thing they could do about it was run.

  And now we four were on the south side. To my right, trees. Thick and verdant, leaves flickering in the sea breeze; a wide green belt above which the steep, craggy rock face rose up to the Lady’s keep, that tower of worked stone and aged timbers sitting like a crown upon Karrek Loos yn Koos.

  The others too will be surprised to see me still in the race, I thought, imagining the faces of those waiting by the keep, idling in the sunshine while we sweated and toiled. They had cheered before, seeing me in fourth place out of fourteen with only one circuit to go. As I had turned back to them, having pressed my palm against the ancient oak of the keep’s door as we all must each time we reached the top, I had seen Pelleas’s teeth flash against his brown face.

  ‘Go on, lad, give ’em a run of it,’ he growled and two or three of the girls had chanted my name and that had put little wings on my heels like those on the sandals of a statue of the Roman god Mercury I had seen in a temple in eastern Benoic.

  Now my ears were full of the wind’s rush, the breaking of white water amongst the sea-carved rocks, and the plaintive calls of wheeling gulls, as my feet slapped on the granite of the foreshore, the sudden firmness announcing itself in my ankles, knees and hips. But I was young and supple as a new beech leaf and swift as an arrow off the string.

  Fifty paces. That was all that separated me from Agga in third place. If I did not take him now I would take him across the grazing meadow before the trees. Maybe I would take Jowan there too, I thought, gaining on them all the while, leaping from rock to rock, never stopping nor even slowing to pick my route across.

  Forty paces. Breathing easily. Jump. Run. Three strides and jump again. Smooth as dawn sunlight spilling across the isle. With a surge of effort, Agga gained on Jowan and threw out a leg and Jowan flew. He hit the rock with a scream and a flail of limbs, and I saw blood bright in the day as I leapt over the tangle of him.

  Just Agga and Melwas to beat now and less than half a circuit to do it. Up the slope, easy as thinking it. Fleet as a hare. The stink of Agga’s sweat lingering on the air. He was worried, was Agga. Pricked by the tines of two fears: losing to Melwas and being beaten by me. So now those big, powerful legs of his moved as fast as he could make them.

  Not fast enough.

  Ten paces. Like a hawk sweeping down to the kill I was on him, then past him and into the trees.

  ‘Damn you!’ he roared. ‘I’ll have you, you shit!’

  And I laughed. Couldn’t help myself. Laughing as I flew up the track. Laughing as I jumped a fallen birch. Laughing as the stick cracked against my face and I reeled and stumbled and fell headlong onto the stony path. How had I not seen him? For there he was. Melwas. Standing there grinning as I bled.

  I looked up at him and at the branch in his hand which he had swung at me like a club, knocking the wits from my skull. He raised that branch towards me, as though saluting me with it, then tossed it aside.

  I thought he would gloat but he didn’t. Just turned and ran up the path. Towards the victory which he knew must now be his. And I watched him go.

  Blood in my mouth. Blood spilling from my nose. Blood on my hands, forearms and knees. But no pain. Just fury. Hot as forge flame. And Agga’s footfalls and ragged breath in my ears getting louder.

  I was up and running, even though I could not see properly for blood and snot and the tears which flood the eyes after a clout to the nose. Up and up. No thoughts of anything cramming my head, for even thoughts cannot dwell in fire.

  And there he was, the blur of him, which was all I needed. I ran without grace and rhythm now, but with more than enough rage to make up for it, my feet pummelling the ground. Gaining a spear-length with every thirty strides. Through the last of the trees and out onto the craggy outcrops bene
ath the Lady’s keep, the sea’s breath filling my chest. The crowd chanting, ‘Lancelot! Lancelot!’

  I was above it all, the Mount, the keep, the shimmering sea, soaring like a feathered shaft, then with a jolt I struck the oak door with both hands and I spun round and there was Melwas pounding up the hill, red-faced and furious.

  ‘Lancelot! Lancelot!’ they called, the warriors and the girls alike, not two or three but twenty or more, their voices creating a strange harmony which wreathed Karrek Loos yn Koos and rose to the heavens.

  I had won.

  6

  Lady of Karrek

  ‘WHO HIT YOU?’ the Lady asked as she poured the red liquid into a long-stemmed cup which gleamed in the flamelight. It might have been bronze made with good tin from the mines of Cornubia, burnished until it shone, but by the lamplight the cup looked like gold or silver.

  I felt Melwas’s eyes on me. Heavy. Hot as coals.

  ‘An elbow, Lady,’ I said, touching the swollen mess of my nose. ‘An accident as I pushed between two boys to get ahead of them.’

  She lifted an eyebrow as she handed me the cup, then filled another, giving it to Melwas.

  ‘There is always a drop or two of blood in the race. Did you know poor Jowan’s arm is broken?’ She held her own right arm, long fingers caressing the pale skin of her elbow, knowing that Agga was responsible for Jowan’s injury. Knowing also that Melwas was behind my swollen nose. I knew I looked a sight, having caught a glimpse of my face reflected in the water barrel outside. Besides which, Pelleas had laughed so hard when he saw me that his sun hat had fallen off and he had trodden it flat when trying to gather it up again.

  Two blackened eyes and a nose twice its normal size. That was what I saw in the water and what had Pelleas laughing his hat off. Hardly the handsome hero from the stories. Not quite the proud Achilles or noble Hector whose tales had held my brother and me spellbound as children. Still, I had won their foot race. As I said I would.

  ‘Well, do you like it?’ the Lady asked. I had put the shining cup to my lips and let the wine seep into my mouth. But I could taste nothing. It was cool and wet and nothing more. ‘Vino rubeo Melfie,’ she said, ‘all the way from a place far to the south of Rome. Just think of the journey it has made to reach us here.’

  In Benoic my father had used to near drown himself in wine but I had never thought anything about how far it had travelled from the vine to his mouth. Nor did I know now how far away Rome was, but I looked into the cup and raised my eyebrows and went along with it.

  ‘As sweet as ripe blackberries, my Lady,’ Melwas said, drinking again. The Lady smiled.

  ‘Lancelot?’ she said, nodding at the cup in my hand.

  I frowned. ‘I cannot taste it,’ I said, shrugging my shoulders. My nostrils were plugged with dried blood and, just as when the nose is blocked with snot and it makes food tasteless, so this expensive Roman wine seemed no more special than water on my tongue. Albeit water that warmed my belly and was already beginning to make my head feel light.

  ‘I see,’ the Lady said, taking a sip from her own cup which matched the ones Melwas and I gripped. I looked at Melwas and he looked at me, and for a few heartbeats neither of us tried to hide the hatred between us. ‘So you would lie for your enemy’s sake but not to please me?’

  I did not know what to say to that and so I shrugged again and looked about the Lady’s bedchamber, then took another sip of the wine which I could not taste.

  ‘He should never have been allowed to run, Lady,’ Melwas blurted into the silence.

  ‘Why? Because he is faster than you, Melwas?’ she asked. ‘Because he is not afraid to beat you and Agga?’

  Melwas’s face turned a similar colour to the Vino rubeo in our cups.

  ‘Because he had not been training with sword and shield as we had and came to the race fresh.’ It was a desperate grab and Melwas knew it and so he tried again. ‘And because he has not earned the right to run,’ he said. And I could not disagree with that. For while the others trained for war, sweating through the days under the men’s tuition, I hunted with my bird or swam in the sea or cleaned Pelleas’s war gear for him or sharpened his blades.

  ‘Perhaps you are right, Melwas,’ the Lady said, her green eyes fixing on my own. ‘Lancelot runs wild on this island, free as the fox and the hare. He has received none of the instruction which you and the others have. He neither hones his body nor learns the arts of war. Lancelot does not know those with whom he shares this place. Does not know what they would do to win the foot race.’ I know now, I thought, a throb of pain in my nose bringing water to my eyes. ‘And yet despite all this, he won anyway,’ she said.

  There was a shout outside, where the men were putting the boys through their paces with spears and shields. I looked to the window, framed in thin red brick and through which the sea breeze came now. I had sometimes seen the Lady looking out that window, watching the boys at their war games.

  ‘He won’t win next year,’ Melwas murmured into his cup as the Lady set her own cup on the table and went over to an oak chest which sat at the foot of her bed. It was swathed in green and purple silks, that bed, and I considered that there were benefits to receiving traders from as far away as the lands of the Byzantine Greeks and beyond. Wine and silks to name but two.

  ‘You ran well, Melwas, and you deserved the wine,’ the Lady said, bringing something towards me which was wrapped in oiled leather. ‘But you may go now,’ she told him with a smile and a nod of her golden head.

  Melwas thanked her for the wine, shot me a hate-filled glare and walked out through the open bedchamber door. I heard his feet scuffing down the worn stone staircase followed by the creak and slam of the oak door. So now the Lady and I were alone in the flickering light of the oil lamps whose smoke I could not smell because of the blood clogging my nose. I threw the rest of the wine down my throat and placed the empty cup beside the others. Perhaps it was the drink that was making my stomach roll over itself. More likely it was because I had not been alone with the Lady since that day, so long ago now, it seemed, when I followed Flame into her tent and she had known me.

  ‘Pelleas said I should give you your gift in front of them all. Make a thing of it.’ She held out the leather-bound mystery and I took it, surprised by how light it was. ‘He thinks it would make the other boys respect you, seeing me present your prize and with a little ceremony woven in.’ She shook her head. ‘I think Pelleas is wrong. I think it would make the others resent you more.’

  ‘I do not care if they hate me,’ I said.

  ‘You should care, Lancelot,’ she said. ‘You may be faster but you are not stronger. Not yet.’

  This was true enough, for all that I did not like hearing it. I looked at the bundle in my hands.

  ‘May I?’ I asked. She nodded. Carefully, I unwrapped the prize, already having an idea what it was by the size and shape. But even when my eyes confirmed it, I was not prepared for the beauty of it.

  A hawking glove. Not ancient and sweat-stained and stinking like old Hoel’s which I used daily. And not too big like that one, either. But new and tightly stitched and gleaming with oils and perfect. I placed the wrapping on the table and slipped my left hand into the gauntlet, relishing the way my fingertips reached the ends if I pulled the glove along my wrist. Almost a perfect fit, yet enough spare room for my hand to grow into it.

  ‘It is deerskin,’ the Lady said.

  ‘I’ve never seen one like it,’ I said, turning my gloved hand over and tracing with the fingers of my right hand the hawk, wings outstretched, that someone skilled with a needle and thread had stitched into the leather.

  ‘It should fit perfectly by the time your bird is fully manned,’ she said. ‘It was made in Cambria, across the Hafren, by a man named Dywel.’ She nodded. ‘Dywel once made a saddle for King Uther.’

  I had heard the men talk of Uther, or Uturius as those who liked to pretend they could speak Latin – though they could barely muster six or seven words o
f the Roman tongue – called him. The Pendragon. The High King of Britain and by all accounts a fearsome giant of a man. A warlord who spat lightning and farted thunder and the only man who could save the Sacred Isles from the Saxon hordes that were spilling ashore with each spring.

  ‘How did this Dywel get the size right?’ I asked. ‘I have never met him, have I?’

  ‘No, you have never met Dywel. He is old and crooked these days, I hear, and has no need to go far from his workshop. His skill and reputation travel for him.’

  Another shout from outside, a booming tirade of curses aimed at Branok and Geldrin. The Lady tilted her head towards the window.

  ‘Goalien brought the glove back with him,’ she said.

  Goalien was one of the Lady’s warriors, one of the Guardians of the Mount, and several weeks previously he had crossed the Hafren with a merchant who traded tin for Cambrian wool. For as well as serving the Lady, the warriors of Karrek served as bodyguards to merchants wishing to venture even beyond Tintagel, deeper into the Dark Isles. These merchants were often far-travelled foreigners from the Mediterranean, who paid the Lady in silver for the use of her men as guides, protectors and translators.

  ‘When he came to Dywel’s village, Goalien pointed out a boy who was your age and size, so far as he could say. Dywel took the measurements from that boy.’

  But Goalien had returned to the Mount three days prior to the foot race. The Lady saw my frown. ‘I had already decided to have Dywel make you a glove,’ she said. ‘Of course, I could not have known you would race with the others, let alone win.’ She shrugged. ‘But you did win. And so what better opportunity to give you a gift?’ She smiled. ‘You have done well with the bird. In truth I never thought you and she would come to an accord. And yet now she answers your call and flies neatly to your arm. Even to that old glove which is too big for you.’