Here Lies Arthur (19 page)

XLI

 

Downstream I found an old building. Just a heap of stones really. Two low walls standing, a wedge of sheltered grass between them, roofed with holly-trees. It was not a good hiding place, for close by it the stream fell whitely into a narrow black pool, and the noise of the water would drown out the sounds of enemies creeping close. But I found nothing better, so that evening I moved Peredur into it. At least it was out of earshot of the crows at the battle-place.

Peredur was weak and feverish, inclined to sleep. Bad dreams kept waking him, and he would jerk his eyes open and say, “I was so afraid. I should have stayed a girl.”

So should I, I thought. I hushed him, and soaked my neck-cloth in stream-water and bathed his face with it. By morning he was worse. Some ailment was working in him, and I was afraid he hadn’t the strength to fight it. It was the shock, I think, as much as the wound itself. Since that day Myrddin had come
to his hall Peredur had lived in stories. He’d expected war to be the way it was in stories: banners and glory and brave deeds. He’d not expected defeat, or pain, or fear.

I sat with him all through that day. I tried telling him that there might be other endings for his story. Maybe this was just a setback. Something to make the listeners gasp and draw closer to the storyteller and think, “It cannot end like this!” before the hero gathered himself up and went on to triumph after all. “You’ll get well soon. Then we’ll go and fight Cunomorus, just the two of us, if we must. Or creep into his hall by stealth, like Odysseus at Troy, and steal some plunder from him that you can take back as tribute to Arthur.”

Peredur smiled. “The lake-lady’s cauldron,” he said. “That will heal me.”

“Of course it will,” I said.

And then I thought, why shouldn’t it? He’d
have
to find the strength to live if he had something like that to carry home to Arthur. Something wonderful. A new gift from the otherworld.

“Sleep, and be strong,” I told him. “Tonight I’ll go and find where the others are. Where
we
are, come to that.”

The day was cold. I risked a little fire, praying that its smoke wouldn’t show among the moor mists. There were speckled brown fish in the pool of the stream and I leaned over the water until one came near enough and I snatched it out. I slit its belly with my knife and cooked it in hot ashes at the fire’s edge. I fed Peredur on baked fish and brambles under the pinkish smears of the evening sky. Afterwards, he slept, and I piled
bracken over him to keep him warm and then scattered wet earth on the fire.

Then I left him there and climbed back up the hill, not knowing if he’d be alive or dead when I came back.

XLII

 

I climbed past the battle-place. The heap of our dead was so high it made me think Peredur had been right, and none of the others had escaped alive. I told myself to stay calm, but the thought of ghosts got inside my head, and set me running, fearful that dead men were running behind me, angry at me for being still alive. I imagined cold hands reaching out to snatch me by the hair. That’s the trouble with this story-telling life. Stories start creeping into your head unbidden, and not all of them are good.

By the time I stopped myself, a lopsided moon had come out from behind the clouds. It showed me the road we had been riding on the day before. Hills whose shapes I knew stood black against moonlit clouds. I followed the road, down through trees, off the moor’s edge. An eye of fire winked at me. Ban’s hall. The woods, bare-branched, making the hillside below it bristle like a hog’s back. Beneath it, out of sight among the riverside trees, my old home. I left the road and
pushed through cages of young birch towards the smell of the river.

Halfway there, a noise in the underbrush brought me up short. A rippling shiver, a scraping metal sound like a dragon unwinding itself, ready to strike.

I drop down in the moon-shadows. The wood-floor between the birches is made of rocks and water. Big tumbled boulders, and little pools between. Twigs and windfall branches everywhere, but all too wet to crack, thank Christ, as I creep crabwise to a place where I can see bare sky between the branches.

A snort. A white smouldering of smoke in the dark and a huge head up-reared, black as a raised hammer on that moony sky. My heart stops, and my bladder empties, drizzling warm piss down my legs into the puddle I’m crouched in. But then, as the thing swings towards me and shambles into a spill of moonshine, I let out my pent breath. I even manage a shuddery laugh.

For it’s my own Dewi. Of course, the Irishman’s boys who ran off the rest of our horses wouldn’t have wanted a stocky old plodder like him. His dangling harness drags over another rock, making that dragony clitter and chink that had sounded so fearful a half-minute before. But I’m not scared now. “Dewi,” I say, and I go forward gently, shushing and calming him, hands out to catch his long head, rubbing his nose, laying my face against his face. It’s a stroke of good luck, plain and simple, but in my nervy state it’s hard not to see it as more. Maybe it’s a sign that God or the lake-lady is looking after me, and has sent Dewi into my way.

I lead him to a place where the trees grow dense. Knot
his broken reins around a birch-bole. Whisper goodbye and promise I’ll be back soon. Then, feeling braver and luckier than before, I go fast as I can to the river. Fight my way out of the clutch of the birches a quarter-mile shy of the homestead I was birthed in.

My first idea, when I left Peredur, was to climb to the hall on the hill-top. My lady Nonnita has a bowl there, which I filled often and often for her with water from the spring, and sprinkled rose-petals in for her to wash herself. An old, gold bowl from Rome or Syria or somewhere fine like that, leopards and hares chasing round its rim. Peredur would easily believe a bowl like that was the lake-lady’s magic cauldron, and even if he didn’t, it would be fine tribute to carry home to Arthur.

But now I’m here, my mind’s changed. My fright on the hillside and my meeting with Dewi have left me feeling thin on strength. The hill looks steep, and at the top there’s a ditch and a rampart and a wall of logs to get through before I can even start creeping into the hall to find Nonnita’s bowl. I’m not Odysseus. I decide to set my aim on something I can maybe reach.

I cross the first big field. Cattle stand sleeping, hairy backs steaming in the night cold, breath smelling of sweet grass. Over the turf wall into the yard. Pigs snuffling in their enclosure. The dwelling-place quiet under its loaf of thatch. Moonlight pales the crossed paws of a dog asleep in its kennel by the door. I creep round to the back, to the place where the spring purls up. Good-luck offerings are balanced on the stones around it, to show the people here aren’t yet so Christian they’re ready to forget the older gods. And
next to the spring, just where it stood in my childhood, a wooden cup, waiting there ready for any weary one who needs a drink. I pick it up. It’s carved from cherry-wood, worn smooth by many hands.

I stuff it inside my tunic. At the front of the house the dog starts to bark, woken by some small sound I’ve made. But I’m over the wall, running along the field-boundary, into the eaves of the wood where the soot-black shadows lie beneath the trees like hides pegged out to dry in the moonlight.

XLIII

 

Peredur slept. Fevery dreams of home drifted inside his head like smoke. The arrow-wound in his shoulder was a sick throbbing. Sometimes he thought Gwyn was with him, and sometimes he remembered that Gwyn had gone. He hoped he would come back soon. He was afraid, alone here. The bracken rustled and the stream belled. The night wind whispered words he couldn’t catch.

Then, in the grey of early morning, he came dimly awake. He was not alone.

She stood on the far side of the little fire that Gwyn had made the day before. She was quite naked, and her limbs and her body were white as milk against the dull rusty colours of the autumn bracken. Behind her the hillsides were ghostly with mist, and she herself seemed ghostly, her shape wavering in the shimmer of heat from the smouldering fire. Sometimes the thin trickle of smoke veiled her completely.

Peredur started to move, to pull himself upright. He
tried to remember his prayers, but his mind was empty. Pain poked through his shoulder and his chest like another arrow hitting.

She came towards him. Her white body dripped river-water. Her face was half hidden by the hanging-down strands of her wet hair, but he felt he knew her and he was suddenly not scared.

In her hands she held a little bowl. Just a cup, really. Made of wood. Dark, and much used. Clear water filled it to the brim. He held his breath as she crouched in front of him. The water in the cup was a trembling oval of light. He glanced past it at her white breasts, her nipples dark against the white, like old coins. He started to raise his eyes to her face, but she pushed the cup towards him and said, “Drink from the cup, and you will be healed.”

So he drank. The water was cold going down. The rim of the cup jarred against his teeth. It trembled with the steady trembling of the hands that held it.

“Shut your eyes,” she said.

He didn’t want to. He wanted to look at her some more. But he knew from stories that the creatures of the otherworld are fickle. If he didn’t obey she might turn him into an owl or a log. He shut his eyes tight.

Her wet hair tickled his face. Her cool mouth touched his. He heard her shivery breath; felt it against his face.

Nothing else. The bracken rustled. He opened one eye. She was gone. On the grass at his side lay the empty cup.

Peredur stood up. He was giddy and his wound seared him, but he didn’t care. He stumbled through
the bracken and looked down into the stream. There was a deep pool overhung with trees. She crouched at the edge among mossy rocks, and though he called out she did not look at him. Just tilted forward and went in with a splash. He saw the white shape of her flatten and dim as she went down deep. Autumn leaves were scattered on the water. The leaves bobbed on the ripples that she’d made. They turned like fish, beneath the surface. Red-golden beech leaves and the paler leaves of oak. Peredur waited and waited, thinking that she’d come up for air. But she did not come up.

At last a noise behind him made him turn. There was Gwyn, coming down a path behind the old shelter, leading Dewi.

“Gwyn!” he shouted. “Gwyn!” Crashing through the bracken, forgetful of his pain. Waving. “Gwyn! She was here! The lake-woman! She was beautiful! She…”

“You’ve been dreaming.” Gwyn was looking oddly at him. A flush of colour on that flat, honest face. A straggle of dew-damp hair hanging down from under his felt cap.

“No, no,” said Peredur, eager to share the good news. He snatched up the cup. “Look! Look! She left this! The water in it, Gwyn, it tasted better than wine. It made me better, Gwyn. I feel strong again!”

He swayed, light-headed. Gwyn dropped the pony’s reins and ran to catch him as he fell. He had been going to tell Gwyn about the lake-woman’s kiss, but, falling, he decided not to. It would be his secret. He
sat in the wet grass, laughing. “It wasn’t like you said, Gwyn. It wasn’t a golden cauldron. Just a wooden cup.”

And Gwyn shrugged and said, “Well, you can’t believe everything you hear in stories.”

XLIV

 

It was only river water, really.

I was afraid he’d guess. I thought he’d think back to Saint Porroc’s miracle and guess his lake-lady was only me, up to my old tricks again. I planned to leave the cup upon a river stone, and work out a way for him to find it there.

But when I got back to the ruin before dawn I found him sleeping, a little feverish still, and I thought he’d be weak and dreamy enough when he woke to believe whatever I wanted him to. So I tethered Dewi in a holly-clump uphill, and left my clothes there too. Crept to the stream and ducked under water. My hair would look longer and straighter and darker wet. I combed it with my fingers, tugging it forward to hide my face. There wasn’t enough to really hide behind, but I wasn’t worried. I had spent enough time around boys to know it wouldn’t be my face he’d be looking at.

The dawn air was chill on my wet skin. I had gathered some birch bark and some of the thin red twigs from the
branches’ tips, and I stooped and cast them on the half-dead fire without waking him. Added some wet oak leaves to make a smoulder. I put the fire between myself and him. The wind blew the thin smoke in his face and he woke.

“Drink from the cup, and you will be healed.” I whispered it, so he wouldn’t know my voice. And when he’d drunk I made him shut his eyes and left quick as I could. I hadn’t planned on him coming after me, but I was glad to see he had enough life in him, even if it did mean I had to take another bath in that corpse-cold stream. From under the water I could see him, all ripply-looking, black against the sky. I let the water pull me away from him. Branches hid me as I slipped down into the next pool, and the next, and then I was out and haring round between the trees to find the place where I’d left my clothes and Dewi.

As for the kiss, you can’t blame me for that, can you? He was so lovely, and so easy to fool. Sitting there with his eyes shut, all surprised. Just a quick warm touch of our mouths together, over in a heartbeat, but I felt glad to have the memory of it.

All the way back to Sulis he talked of nothing but the lake-woman. And every time he spoke of her she grew more beautiful, and her speech to him grew prettier. He wasn’t lying. He really thought he remembered her dark blue eyes and her lips as red as rowan berries. Sometimes he filled the wooden cup at a spring or a well, but the water never tasted as good as the water
she
had filled it with.

I tried telling him my own tale; how I’d found Dewi wandering in the woods. But it couldn’t compete with his miracle.

We found our way home along back-roads. Down drift-lanes and sheep-paths and half-forgotten tracks through the deep woods. Slow going, mostly, for the ways were poor, and Peredur still weak. His wound hurt him, and his fever rose and fell but never quite left him. I made him ride, and trudged along at Dewi’s side until my feet wore through the bottoms of my boots. I listened out always for the Irishman’s riders coming after us, but they never did. Sometimes we passed small settlements where the men looked slantwise at us, but we had knives in our belts and nothing else worth stealing, and they let us go by.

Around first frost we crossed into Arthur’s territory, and reached Din Branoc. The people were surprised to see me back, with only one companion. I asked if any others from Cei’s war-band had passed that way, and they just stared. Save me and Peredur, none had returned from the Irishman’s hills. The only traveller they’d seen since I stopped there was a messenger from the Irishman himself, who passed through like thunder, pausing just long enough to ask the way to Aquae Sulis.

“We offered him shelter,” said the headman, as he welcomed us to his fireside, “but he would not stop. Said he was carrying news Arthur would be glad to hear. Said he’d eat well in Sulis that night.”

That threw me. What word could the Irishman have sent that Arthur would be glad of? I wondered for a
moment if Cei was alive after all, and the Irishman wanted Arthur to pay ransom for him. But my own eyes had seen the Irishman kill Cei. His messenger would not have been so sure of a welcome at Arthur’s fireside if the message he had carried was only, “Your brother and his companions are all dead.”

Would he?

I tried to think like Myrddin, remembering the reasons he had given for sending Cei and Cei’s closest followers west. Some may not return at all, he’d said. As if that was a good thing.

So wouldn’t it be an even better thing if none returned?

I imagined a messenger leaving Aquae Sulis, two days after Bedwyr died. Speeding west, outpacing Cei’s warband. One of Arthur’s trusted companions, Owain or Gwri, with a message from Arthur for the Irishman. “Twenty warriors are riding to your hall. Meet them on the road. Kill them all.”

I told myself I was wrong. I told myself I’d lived too long with Myrddin, and it had made me see tricks where there were none. But I still could think of no other reason for the Irishman’s messenger to be riding up to Arthur’s hall.

And if I was right, and Cei and his men had been meant to die in the Irishman’s hills, what would Arthur make of me and Peredur coming home, with our tale of wonder and our wooden cup? We’d be dead within a day, I reckoned. Arthur would have us snuffed out, for fear we knew the truth about the others.

While I stood there, silent, thinking those thoughts,
Peredur had fetched the cup out. The men of Din Branoc passed it around reverently while he told them how he came by it. “It’s a sign from the lady of the waters. Just like the sword she gave him. She’s on his side still. She gave me this cup, and I’ll give it to Arthur.”

“May it change his luck,” said the headman, shaking his head. “Arthur’s fortune’s turned foul. A score or more of his companions have sneaked off to join Medrawt.”

“Medrawt’s raising himself an army down in the Summer Country,” another said. “We heard Maelwas has promised him lordship of Aquae Sulis if he’ll rid the place of Arthur.”

“What about Myrddin?” I asked. “What news of him?”

The men looked sour. I saw a couple cross themselves at the mention of Myrddin’s name. One said, “That old heathen.”

“Myrddin was took bad, a month back or more,” said the headman, and leaned over to spit into the fire.

“There was a girl at his place,” explained one of the others, pleased to be sharing good gossip with one who’d not heard it yet. “She was some kinswoman of his, who’d been Gwenhwyfar’s handmaiden, and after Gwenhwyfar ran off she got took in by Myrddin. I reckon she must have turned his head, for when she left him he fell down in a fit, and now he can’t walk nor talk. He keeps to that place of his, with just a boy to look after him.”

“Nothing so foolish as an old man running after a girl,” said the headman.

“She enchanted him’s what I heard,” put in another man. “She wove spells round him to make him love her, so she could learn his secrets.”

I let them talk. It was strange, meeting my story-self in their tales. How much of what they’d said was true? Was Myrddin really ailing? If he was, it was no more than he deserved. Yet I felt troubled at the thought of him sick, and none but the boy Cadwy to look after him. And I thought, if I could see him, talk to him, he’d tell me whether what I feared was true, and whether it would be safe or not for Peredur to go back to Sulis.

Lulled by the voices and the fire’s warmth Peredur fell asleep, leaning against me, his head on my shoulder. I lowered him gently on to the straw-covered boards, and brushed away a strand of hair that had fallen across his angel face. His brow was hot. His fever was worse again.

“Can you care for him?” I asked the headman. “He needs food and warmth and shelter till he’s mended.”

The headman nodded, the others too. They were good people. The headman’s wife, who’d sat silent till then, said, “I’ll nurse him. You’ve done your best, but nursing’s woman’s work.”

“You leaving us, Gwyn?” someone asked, as I stood and pulled my cloak about me.

I nodded; told them I’d be back in a day or so with a horse for Peredur and not to let him leave before I came.

“It’s an ill night for travelling,” the headman said. “Snow on the way, maybe.”

“Myrddin’s my kin,” I said. “If he’s sick, I must go to him.”

And if he isn’t sick, I thought, going out into the cold to saddle Dewi, I shall have some hard things to say to him.