At the Crossing Places (16 page)

A
FTER MERLIN LEFT, I WISHED SO MUCH I COULD SEE
everyone at Caldicot.

I wished I could go walking up the Little Lark with Gatty, and listen to Nain tell us all a story, and play the Saxon-and-Viking game with Sian. I even wished I could see Serle.

I thought I'd have found out much more about my mother by now.

I wish I had a home. A real home.

When Haket dismissed me from my lesson this afternoon, I saw Rowena wandering down the far side of the churchyard. She pretended not to see me, and I'm sure she was waiting to see Haket. But why? Rowena's afraid of him, I can see that, but I still haven't managed to find out what's going on between them.

It was raining quite steadily, and there was no one in the hall, so I came up to my room. I unwrapped my obsidian, and at once I saw Merlin talking to Arthur-in-the-stone.

“Wherever you go, take Excalibur with you,” he says. “Wear it by day and wear it when you sleep—the sword and the scabbard. The day will come when a woman you trust with your life will try to steal it from you.”

Now King Arthur leaves Camelot and goes out hunting with Sir Accolon and Sir Urien, the husband of his sister Morgan. It's getting dark as they come to a lake and see a barge moored to the bank. From bow to stern, its gunwales are draped with colored silks.

As soon as they step aboard, one hundred flaming torches light themselves. Then twelve beautiful young women step forward and lead them to a table covered with white linen.

They eat, they drink, they yawn, and the young women conduct them to their beds…

But now! Now Sir Accolon and Sir Urien have disappeared, I don't know where, and Arthur-in-the-stone is sitting on the floor in a gloomy prison cell with twenty other knights. He's not wearing his sword.

“Some of us have been here for seven years,” one knight says. “Some even longer.”

“On account of Sir Damas.”

“That piece of scum.”

“He won't allow his own brother, Ontzlake, his share of the inheritance—his own manor.”

“Ontzlake has challenged him.”

“And Damas has refused to fight. Unless someone will fight on his behalf.”

“Who'd fight for him?”

“No one here.”

“And that's why Damas won't let us go.”

“On condition that I get my sword and scabbard back, and Sir
Damas releases you all,” the king calls out, “I will fight on behalf of Sir Damas.”

Now the scene in my seeing stone is changing again. First it fades, then somehow breaks into dozens, hundreds, of tiny colored pieces dancing a jig, like the spots of sunlight under our copper beech. And now they all come together again.

Sir Accolon is sitting beside a wall, and a dwarf walks up to him, holding a sword as long as he is tall.

“Your lover, Morgan le Fay, greets you,” says the dwarf. “She says you'll have to fight against a knight tomorrow morning, and so she's sending you Excalibur, King Arthur's sword. You're to show no mercy. She wants to see that knight's severed head.”

“So!” says Sir Accolon. “The barge, the torches, and the young women were all her doing?”

“Of course,” says the dwarf. Then he bows and leaves. At once a knight on crutches swings towards Sir Accolon.

“Sir Ontzlake,” says Accolon, “last night you gave me lodging when I was lost. Let me repay you.”

“I can't fight,” says Ontzlake, “not until these thigh wounds heal, and tomorrow I must honor my challenge to my brother, Sir Damas.”

Sir Accolon grasps Excalibur. “I will fight for you,” he says.

The very moment Accolon says this, the scene in my stone changes again, and I can see Arthur-in-the-stone standing outside Sir Damas's castle, surrounded by the twenty prisoner-knights. Some are whey-faced, some haggard, and they reel around in the light. “Freedom!” they shout. “Freedom! Freedom!”

A young woman rides up and hands the king a sword. “Your own loving sister Morgan le Fay owns the barge you boarded last night. While you slept, she looked after your sword.”

Arthur-in-the-stone inspects the sword and scabbard. He is in terrible danger.

Many people are gathering outside Sir Damas's castle. Among them I can see Merlin's apprentice, dark-eyed Nimue, whom the king favored by knighting her foster son, Lancelot.

Before long, Sir Accolon rides up, and neither he nor Arthur-in-the-stone recognize each other. Three times they splinter their lances without unseating each other. But when they gallop for the fourth time, they each ram their lance into the center of the other's shield. They're both jolted backwards and hit the ground with a terrible clatter.

As soon as they cross swords, Arthur knows something is wrong. His sword looks and feels like Excalibur; but its edge only grazes Accolon's gauntlet, while Accolon's shears right through the king's mail-shirt. His rib cage is gashed.

Like a wild boar or a stag at bay, Arthur-in-the-stone launches himself at Accolon. He smashes his sword into the side of Accolon's helmet, and the sword snaps. It breaks off at the crossguards, and the king is left holding the pommel in his right hand.

Furious, Accolon glares at King Arthur through the slit of his helmet. “You won't last long,” he gloats. “Submit!”

“Never!” the king says. “I'd rather die with honor than live in shame.”

With his shield he pushes Accolon back three steps and boxes his left ear-guard with his steel pommel.

Accolon bares his teeth and grins. He whirls his sword so fast it looks like a silver halo, and then his grasp loosens. Excalibur flies out of his right hand.

Nimue smiles, tight-lipped. Around her everyone is shouting and waving, but she is intent. This is all her doing. I can feel her power. She takes a deep breath and flexes her fingers, then locks them inside her left fist.

Accolon and the king lurch after the sword, and the king gets to it first. Excalibur!

One stroke's enough! He smacks Accolon's helmet and Accolon topples over sideways.

“No,” says Accolon in a husky voice. “I will not submit.”

“Who are you?” Arthur demands. “Tell me here and now or I'll cut your throat.”

“Accolon. Accolon of Gaul. I am a knight of King Arthur's Round Table.”

“Who gave you this sword, then?” the king asks in a low voice.

“Morgan le Fay,” replies Accolon. “She lent it to me so I can fight the man she most hates—her own brother, King Arthur.”

“Why does she hate him?”

“She's jealous of him: his power. The loyalty he inspires. She's promised me that if I kill him, she'll do away with her husband, Urien, and marry me. She says we'll rule together. She says I'll be king of Britain.”

“So you are ready to kill your own king,” Arthur says.

Accolon stares up at Arthur-in-the-stone through his helmet-slit; his eyes are misty. “I am dying,” he says in a faraway voice. “Who are you? What court? What is your name?”

“Accolon…I am Arthur. Your king.”

“Dear God!” cries Accolon, and he struggles to sit up, but he's too weak. “My king! Have mercy on me!”

“Mercy?” the king says. “Yes, I'll forgive you for fighting and wounding me, because I can see you didn't know who I was. But you agreed to kill me. You are a traitor.”

“Mercy!” croaks Accolon, and then he begins to choke.

“You are nothing but Morgan's puppet. You're under her spell, just as I was when she stole my sword.” Arthur's voice rises in anger and sorrow. “Morgan!” he cries. “Morgan! I have loved you. I would have trusted you with my life.”

Around them crowd all the knights and ladies and people who work on Sir Damas's manor. The king has lost so much blood that he's light-headed; he totters around like a drunkard.

“Sir Damas,” he says, “you're not worthy to be called a knight. Give Ontzlake the manor that is already his. If a single man in my kingdom comes to me complaining of you, I will have you put to death. But you,” says King Arthur, and he leans on Sir Ontzlake's shoulder, “I hope you will come to court. There'll be a place for you at the Round Table.”

“I swear to serve you,” Sir Ontzlake says. “And yet I would have fought you, but for these wounds.”

“I wish you had,” the king replies. “My wounds would not have been so grievous. Morgan, my own sister, stole my sword. She used my own power against me.”

Beside the king, Sir Accolon sighs. His eyelids flutter and settle. Very lightly, he crosses the bridge from life to death.

“Lay him out on his shield,” Arthur tells Sir Ontzlake, “and
have him carried to my sister. Tell her I'm sending him as a gift. Tell her I have Excalibur and my scabbard.”

The king closes his eyes. He's giddy, twisting in air. “Take me to an abbey,” he says, “where nuns can search my wounds with leeches—a peaceful place where I can rest and recover.”

I
S HE HERE?” MORGAN ASKS. “MY BROTHER?”

“He's sleeping at last,” a nun says. “I'll take you to him.”

“You can leave me with him.”

“But…”

“I'll sit beside him until he wakes.”

King Arthur is holding Excalibur in his right hand, but his scabbard is lying on the floor beside the bed. Morgan looks at him. Her dark eyes are on fire. Now she stoops, quietly picks up the scabbard, and steals out of his room, silent as the first soft rain.

But we can sense things even when we're asleep, and wake already knowing.

“She's your own sister,” a nun explains, “and none of us here dared to disobey her. She said she'd sit beside you.”

The king's wounds are still seeping water and blood, his bones are aching. But he rides after Morgan.

Between boulders, hunched over a rocky lake, Morgan reins in and brandishes the scabbard.

“Arthur will never see this again,” she shouts, and she heaves the scabbard into the lifeless water. Its gold casing, inlaid with emeralds and rubies, is so heavy that it sinks at once.

When the king rides up to the lake, he reins in as if he can sense that his scabbard is hidden in its dark heart. The rocks and
boulders cluster around him, as if they want to squeeze the life out of him.

And one strange, rearing boulder seems to be staring at him and scowling: more rock than woman and palfrey. More heartless than rock.

G
RACE IS WRONG. BOYS ARE NOT AS DIFFERENT FROM
girls as she supposes. It's not true that I think love is just a cruel sport like hart hunting or hare hunting. I have strong feelings too.

When I had my second singing lesson with Rahere, he taught me a riddle-song about a cherry without a stone and a dove without a bone and a rosebush without flower or leaf. I've changed all the words into a kind of reply to the poem Grace told me just before I left Gortanore, and I'm going to write it out onto a new piece of parchment. The next time Simon rides over to Gortanore, he can give it to her:

I have a half sister
Who lives at Gortanore,
And the little I give her
She can make more.

I'll send her a song
Without a voice,
And send her a lover
With no face.
I'll send her a name
Lacking a squire,
I'll send my half sister
Hope and fear and fire.

How can there be a song
Without a voice?
And how can a lover
Have no face?

How can a name
Lack a squire?
Why send your half sister
Hope and fear and fire?

When a song is unheard
It has no voice,
And when a lover is ignored
He has no face.

A name lacks a squire
Until he knows his quest.
Hope and fear and fire, Grace:
They're beating in my chest.

M
ORGAN IS SO ANGRY AT SIR ACCOLON'S DEATH THAT
she wants to kill King Arthur.

“Your sister Morgan has sent me here to Camelot,” the young woman tells the king. “She begs you to forgive her, and promises to give you back your scabbard. With love, Morgan sends you this cloak.”

Its color is very strange. It is pearly and silver-grey, like an oyster. You think you can see through it, but you can't. And embedded in it are hundreds of tiny, winking orange seeds.

“She had it made for you,” the young woman says.

Sir Ontzlake is standing quite close to the king. “Sire,” he asks, “can you trust her?”

“I'll ask Merlin.”

“He's not here,” says Nimue. “But we'll soon find out. Let this young lady try the cloak on first.”

“I won't do that,” the young woman says quickly.

“Why not?” asks Arthur.

“I can't wear a cloak made for my king.”

“You may,” Arthur tells her.

“No!” protests the young woman.

“Put it on her, then!” the king instructs Sir Ontzlake.

At once the tiny winking seeds burst into leaping orange flames. The young woman screams: But the more she struggles, the tighter the cloak becomes. She is burned alive.

I screwed up my eyes and turned my stone over. I buried it in its saffron wrapping.

I
HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT MAGIC.

The first degree isn't really magic at all. It's conjuring—the kind of tricks people do at Ludlow Fair—and conjuring is trickery.

Merlin told me once that many things seem miraculous until we understand them, and that's true of the second degree of magic. Herbs can heal us, provided we pick them on the right days, and drugs can change the way we look. But until we know their properties and powers, they seem magical.

The third degree is when a person concentrates and finds a force inside himself or within an object, and releases it.

This is what happened when Arthur-in-the-stone pulled the sword from the stone. He stared at the sword—he stared into the sword—until nothing else in the world existed. There was no room for doubt or disbelief.

I think it's like this with my seeing stone too. Sometimes when I look into it, it shows me nothing, because my mind and heart are already too busy. To see anything in it, I have to come somehow empty and ready.

Some people use words and sounds when they practice the third degree. When Merlin told Sir John he knew a charm to make second sons vanish, I think he was just teasing me. And I doubt whether it can be true, as Nain claims, that there are words that
can swallow sound. All the same, I know some words are magical. Charms and prayers, maybe: the way they sound.

If words can be used to help and to heal, they must also be able to hurt. There's no good without evil, not since Adam and Eve ran howling out of Eden. Haket says God allows evil to enable each of us to win clear drops of virtue from it.

And then there's the fourth degree: God's magic. When Jesus fed a whole crowd with five loaves and two fishes…and when He raised Lazarus…

“How dare you?” Oliver shouted at Merlin once. “You heretic! How dare you call the Christian mysteries magic? Do I have to explain them?”

“You can explain them?” says Merlin, smiling.

Oliver puffed himself up. “And it's high time you listened,” he said.

“Divine magic surpasses human understanding,” Merlin said. “Even yours, Oliver.”

“Get away from me!” exclaimed Oliver, waving his pudgy hands. “You poisonous loaf!”

“If you can explain divine magic,” Merlin said, “you're really saying God is so small that He can fit inside your brain.”

I wish Merlin were still here, so I could discuss all this with him.