King of the Middle March (14 page)

S
INCE HER FATHER DROWNED, SIMONA HAS BEEN LIST
less and sad; she's nervous too because the sailors say a woman aboard means bad luck. When we reached Trieste, Lord Stephen suggested Serle and I should try to lift her spirits, so we took her with us when we exercised our horses.

We rode west towards Aquileia because Simona wanted to see the mosaics in the basilica there. They're almost one thousand years old and show all kinds of animals and birds. One of the priests in Trieste told us we'd get there well before the sun crowned the sky, but that wasn't true.

“He was only telling us what we wanted to hear,” Serle said.

At midday we decided to turn back. The sun shone, steady and warm on our backs. Serle was quite friendly and for several miles he and Simona ambled along well behind me. Simona sat in front of Serle, and now and then I could hear them laughing. I was glad to be almost alone. Since Lord Stephen and I reached Venice on Saint John's Eve, I've been surrounded by other people, hundreds of them, thousands, for each hour of every day.

For a while we lay on the stony hillside set well back from the dunes. Simona and Serle both drowsed, but I listened to all the far sounds of the sea, and remembered telling Grace about the
whispering spirits in the trees on Tumber Hill, and sitting with her for hours in my climbing-tree.…

I didn't see the old man coming down the hillside until he walked right up to us.

We all scrambled to our feet.

The old man glared, and his withered lips quivered. Then he began to shout. And he chanted something.

“What's he saying?” I asked.

Simona shrugged her shoulders. “Not Italian,” she replied.

The old man pointed out at the ground and stamped. He stamped seven times.

“He's cursing us,” I exclaimed.

“That's obvious,” said Serle.

I spread my hands in front of the old man, and smiled, but he just spat on the ground.

“Come on!” said Serle. “Let's go.”

“I wish I knew what he was saying,” I said.

In silence the three of us walked Bonamy and Shortneck away. When we got back to our galley, though, several sailors blocked the gangway, and wouldn't allow Simona on board.

They began to shout at her, and then many more sailors and oarsmen crowded along the gunwale and looked down at us.

“Basta!”
yelled Simona.

“What's wrong?” I asked her.

“They are liars!”

“Why?”

“I never slandered the
Violetta
's captain. I never said he's the bad worse captain in the fleet.”

“You didn't?”

“No!” said Simona loudly, and her breath was hot on my face.

“Well, was he?”

“I know nothing!” cried Simona. “I said nothing. I swear by God.”

“I believe you, Simona,” Serle said, and he moved a step closer to her.

“They say my father told me that,” protested Simona. “Not! They're making it up. Liars!”

“I believe you as well,” I said, “but I don't know what we're going to do about it.”

Simona and Serle and I looked up at all the oarsmen lining the gunwale and jeering, and they looked down at us.

And then, of all things, Serle spoke up. I've known him for as long as I can remember, and he's the one who swims with the tide, and never stands up to be counted. Serle took Simona's hand and walked up the gangplank, and I followed them.

“Who speaks English here?” he demanded.

There was a good deal of jostling; then a sailor with a pitted face and eyes pale as olive stones was pushed to the top of the gangplank.

“You speak evil of the dead,” Serle said in a loud, clear voice. “Silvano never found fault with the captain of the
Violetta,
and you know it.” He pointed at the sailor. “Translate that!” he snapped.

Some men muttered and crossed themselves.

“You're using the father to attack the daughter,” Serle continued. “Why? Because you're afraid of women? Why do you believe everything people say? Silvano was an honorable man, and you can
see for yourselves that Simona's innocent. Her father loved her. He chose to bring her with him. And now she has lost him and she's far away from home; she needs your protection.”

I listened openmouthed, and in my heart I cheered.

I can tell Serle really likes Simona, and that must be what made him so bold. But what about Simona? She likes Englishmen, and I could see she liked riding with Serle today. Shortneck did more than his fair share!

Serle is strong, but he looks so sour, and he's not at all courteous. He can never marry Tanwen, and he won't even see her again for the next two years, so maybe he and Simona can be good for each other.

“Simona, Silvano's daughter, is under my protection and she's coming aboard with us.” That's what Serle proclaimed. “Lord Stephen will be very glad to protect her. So will Sir William de Gortanore.”

“And me,” I said indignantly.

Serle turned round. “And so will Arthur,” he said. “Sir Arthur de Gortanore!”

“Yes!” I said loudly. “I will!”

“We're coming aboard,” said Serle. “Make room! I'm going to speak to our captain.”

W
HEN I LIVED AT CALDICOT, I LOVED ROARING
days. I used to climb Tumber Hill and lean right into the wind. I thought I might be able to fly like Merlin.

But sea winds are more chancy. After we left Trieste I asked Piero, our steersman, whether the bora was likely to open its mouth again before we reached Zara, and he said, “You never know what blows out of Ulysses's bag!” He spread his arms. “Maybe solano. That makes you giddy, dust gets into your eyes and blocks your nostrils, and you can't steer straight. Or the harmattan…”

“What's that?”

“It flies out of Africa, carrying fog on its back, and it's so dry, it withers grass, and your skin peels off. Or the sirocco, maybe. That wears you out, then turns you mad. Like a bad wife!”

“There must be friendly winds as well,” I said.

“The etesian,” replied Piero. “Volturnus. Simoom.”

“I like the sound of that.”

“Si,”
said Piero, “you need to know what wind if you want to sail before it.”

I'm going to ask him whether I can visit his little latticed chamber and hold the tiller that steers our galley.

T
O BEGIN WITH, I WAS LEANING OVER THE GUNWALE
with an old crusader.

“It will be like this all the way to the Kingdom of Jerusalem,” he told me. “This light.” He squinted and his eyes glimmered like Venetian sequins. “And the land. All the way. Arid!”

It grew dark, and we could see the bow lanterns of all the galleys in our fleet. Gently swinging, and yet seeming not to. Night-floaters. Adriatic fireflies!

Then our galley began to sink. And around us the entire crusader fleet began to go down, quietly. Down into the dark bowl of the sea. Our lanterns lit the underwater, and made it beautiful.

Lord Stephen and I and Bertie and everyone else swam in a tight shoal, and Milon led us. Wido and Giff and Godard kept darting in front of me, mouths gaping. Bertie was so happy. First he rolled over and over, then he dived away into the dark, and I knew I'd never see him again.

Many other shoals crossed our water-path and got in our way: Norman louts, and those German sausage-squires who halfdrowned Bertie and me, a huddle of monkfish, the bloodthirsty Picardians who chopped each other's fingers off, and the angry knights Queen Guinevere entertained to dinner, the Flemings who looted the food-barge, the graveyard demons Sir Lancelot fought.

Rhys swam up beside me. “We should make our boats of horse hides,” he said. “Sew them like coracles, see? You tell Simona that.”

“I see,” I said.

“You sew,” replied Rhys. “You're clever, sir. You know what this is?

“Some people carry their horses

to the battleground on their backs.

They leap on their steeds to catch

their prey, then carry their horses

home again on their shoulders.”

A dusty wind began to blow through the water, and it snuffed out all our lanterns. We were in the dark.

Then shoals of fish began to rush at us and attack us. Their eyes were wicked—silver, bloodshot, periwinkle—and they arched their backs, and lashed us with the curved blades of their tails.

Their voices were shrill.

“Ours!”

“Not yours.”

“We'll slit your throats.”

“And sip your blood.”

“And pick your bones.”

“Ours!”

“Out!”

Fish of all kinds, with furious eyes, surrounded us and crowded us. They lashed us and spiked us, they grinned and stung us, they coiled round us, bit us.

I yelled. I flailed with my arms. That's when I woke up.

I lay under my skin and watched the breasting sails; I listened to each comfortable groan and creak and the rush and sluice of water.

Those angry fish, pike and swordfish, dogfish, octopus. Who were they? Were they Saracens?

If only Merlin were here. Or Johanna, the wisewoman, with her lobster whiskers. She'd be able to tell me everything my dream means. I wonder whether Simona can explain dreams.

S
O HENRI'S NOSE WAS LEFT DANGLING
.”

“Bloody Saracen!”

“He was! That's exactly what he was by the time I'd done with him.”

“Still! I'd give my nose to win honor like Henri's.”

“Honor! That's right. Let the bastards know they can always count on second helpings.”

“You've heard about when he was lowered into the cavern?”

“Arthur!” said a voice in my ear.

“Sir!”

“I've been wondering where you were.”

“Here, sir.”

“So I see. And in a cavern.”

I turned my back on the two knights from Champagne, and Lord Stephen and I walked across the forum to the other gunwale.

“Don't believe everything you hear,” Lord Stephen said. The skin at the corners of his eyes crinkled. “Your face. Your poor troubled face. I know you.”

“Yes, sir,” I said, and all I wanted to do was bury my head on Lord Stephen's shoulder.

“Come on, now,” Lord Stephen said. “Serle's been telling me how you and he faced down our sailors in Trieste, and insisted they let Simona come aboard. Is that right?”

“Yes, sir. Well, Serle did.”

“Quite right!” said Lord Stephen crisply. “Poor girl! I'll be glad to protect her. Now you know I was gloomy a couple of days ago?”

“Yes, sir.”

“Well, why now and not long ago I can't imagine, but your dear father suddenly accused me of working against him.”

“Against him?”

“By trying to arrange a meeting with your mother.”

The back of my neck tingled, and I shivered. “How did he know, sir?”

“There's only one way, isn't there? Do you remember when I warned Thomas that if he wasn't ready to help us, we'd make other arrangements? He must have run straight as a rat to his master.”

“What did you tell Sir William, sir?”

“Nothing. I advised him not to be so unwise as to open old wounds. Listen, Arthur! I know you're trying to be dutiful to your father. That's proper, and I wish you godspeed, but don't lower your guard.” Lord Stephen grasped the gunwale with both hands. “I do wish we could trust the man, but I'm sorry to say I fear Sir William. He's like a force of nature, one moment harmless, the next vengeful and very dangerous.”

I thought immediately of Mordred.

Mordred. Mordant. Morbid. Mordor. Murdered. His namecompanions are vile.

Mordred knows his father did not want him, just as I know my father did not want me.

Mordred and King Arthur: son and father. They too must feel so torn.

F
OR TWO DAYS AND TWO NIGHTS NOW WE'VE BEEN
lurching and walloping south, and around us the waves have bristled. Short seas are what Piero calls them.

Most of us have been sick. I have a dozen times, and I can't even go down the hatchway without smelling vomit and feeling sick again, so I'm living on the deck, wearing two pairs of hose and two shirts, wrapped in my sheepskin.

I'm glad Winnie can't see me looking like this.

As if the smell below were not bad enough, Bertie had to pump the stinking water out of the bilge-well because he was discourteous to Milon yesterday. He was pretending to be a mad sheep, and to begin with, Milon was quite amused, but then he went too far and baahed in Milon's face and bit his right arm.

Bertie scowled at me. “Tell me other things that stink,” he said.

“Shit.”

“Worse than that.”

“Rotten fish. So rotten they glow in the dark.”

“What else?”

“I don't know. Vomit. Yes, vomit! And fear.”

“Fear doesn't smell.”

“It certainly does.”

“What else?”

“Bad eggs. Sir William's breath. Stink-horn. A bitch in heat. Wild garlic.”

“Farts,” said Bertie.

“And goats,” I said. “And a skin that hasn't been cured properly.”

“And a corpse!” declared Bertie enthusiastically. “Add all those together and that's what bilge-water smells like.”

When we sailed out of Venice, with all that chanting and cheering, I supposed we'd reach Zara in four or five days. I didn't realize that the Doge planned to disembark at Pirano and Trieste, and have all their city councillors swear new oaths. He likes to keep people waiting so they can see how powerful he is, and anyhow he's ancient, and never does anything quickly.

The day we left Saint Nicholas was the hundredth after we left Holt, and twenty-nine more days have passed since then. Last night Milon came up for air and sat with me. He told me it's too late in the year now to sail south from Zara. The winds and water are too unchristian; we'll have to winter there and sail in the spring.

For the Holy Land? Or Egypt? At this rate, we'll never get to Jerusalem at all.

I told Gatty once I would try to send her a message when I reached Jerusalem. How did I think I was going to do that?

Last night I unwrapped my seeing stone.

It looked like sea waves when they glow in the dark. Then I could see King Arthur standing beside his throne, speaking to his queen and ladies and knights.

“Sir Lancelot proved the queen was innocent when he defeated Sir Mador, and Nimue has confirmed it. She did not poison the apple. She did not cause the death of Sir Patrise.”

The queen holds up her head.

“Nimue, Merlin's apprentice, most loyal to me, says she can tell by her magic the apples were poisoned by Sir Pinel le Savage. Sir Pinel. He wanted to kill you, Gawain, because you killed his cousin.”

“I did,” says Sir Gawain.

“But now Sir Pinel has fled,” the king says.

While Arthur-in-the-stone is speaking, the far door swings open, and in walk two ladies, one the age of Lady Alice, the other twice as old, followed by two pages carrying a litter. A knight is lying on it.

“Come forward!” King Arthur calls out.

“I live close to Trieste,” the older lady tells Arthur. “My name is Agatha. This is my daughter, Fyleloly.”

Fyleloly curtsies to the king. She has black hair and high cheekbones, and her skin's sallow.

“And this is my son,” says Lady Agatha. “Urry. Sir Urry of the Mount. He fought in a tournament and killed Sir Alphegus. But Sir Alphegus wounded him seven times. Three head wounds, three on his body, and one on his left hand.”

“Lady,” says Arthur-in-the-stone, “my people are courtiers, not surgeons or healers.”

“Sire,” the lady replies, “Alphegus's mother was a sorceress. She cast a spell on Urry. His wounds can never heal until the greatest knight in the world touches them. Fyleloly and I have traveled through every Christian country searching for him.”

“Lucky the man with so loving a mother,” King Arthur says.

“And sister,” the lady adds.

“So loyal,” says the king. “So persistent.”

“For seven years we've searched,” Lady Agatha continues.

“If any man can heal your son, it will be a knight of the Round Table,” King Arthur says. “I wish only that they were all here, but forty of them are questing for the Holy Grail. I will try myself, not because I think I'll succeed, but if the king leads, others follow. Meet me in the castle meadow in the morning.”

How easily my stone slips through time.

Sir Urry is kneeling on a gold cushion in the meadow, surrounded by all the kings and queens and dukes and duchesses and earls and countesses, all the knights and ladies and squires and pages at King Arthur's court.

Sir Urry doesn't look like the men I saw in Trieste and Pirano. He has no moustache, his hair is neatly cut, and he's as slight as a slender girl. His wounds are eating at him, and he's wasting away.

“May I lay my hands on your wounds?” asks the king.

“I am yours to command,” Sir Urry whispers.

Gently the king lays his left hand over the ugly gash on Sir Urry's neck and cheek, and his right hand over Sir Urry's wrist.

At once both wounds open. They weep blood.

Seeing this, one man after another steps forward. King Uriens of Gore. Duke Galahaut. Earl Aristause. Sir Kay. Sir Melion of the Mountain and Sir Dodinas le Savage. The Knight of the Black Anvil, and the copper-colored knight and the spade-faced knight. Sir Grummor Grummorson. Sir Arrok, Sir Marrok, whose wife turned him into a werewolf for seven years, Sir Griflet, Sir Piflet, little Sir Gumret.

But they all fail. Brave men and bullies, loyal men, liars, they're
no more able to cure Sir Urry's wounds than any knight could pull the sword out of the stone.

Sir Tor steps forward now. I like him. He's the son of a knight and a poor woman—the cowherd's wife. That's what I am too.

Sir Tor bends over, and carefully places both his big, flat hands on Sir Urry's back.

Sir Urry moans. Blood kicks out of his wound and drenches his linen shirt.

“Where's Sir Lancelot?” the king asks. “Why is he never here when we need him?”

“Look!” cries Queen Guinevere.

Sir Lancelot gallops into the meadow and dismounts.

“And how does he always know when he is needed?” asks the king.

“My heart,” Fyleloly whispers to her brother, “my heart tells me this is the man.”

“Do as we've all done,” King Arthur instructs Sir Lancelot. “Lay your hands on Sir Urry's wounds.”

“If you cannot heal him,” Sir Lancelot replies, “I cannot.”

“Try,” says the king.

“I cannot disobey you,” Sir Lancelot replies, “but I've no wish to try to do what other knights cannot.”

“You misunderstand me,” the king says. “The knights of the Round Table are equals. We are one fellowship.”

If only that were true. When the Holy Grail floated into Camelot and circled the Round Table, and so many knights swore to quest for it, King Arthur knew his ring of honor was breached.

“On earth everything changes,” that's what the king said then.
“But knowing you must die on your quests, many of you, is it wrong to grieve?”

Sir Urry looks up at Sir Lancelot. “Honor me, Sir Lancelot,” he says.

Most of the knights get down onto their knees. Not all of them, though. Some are too old. Some are eaten by jealousy.

Sir Lancelot kneels beside Sir Urry. He raises his eyes. He mouths a prayer.

Now gently and firmly, he presses his fingers into Sir Urry's three head wounds, the three wounds on his body, the wound on his left wrist.

The open wounds close. Seven scars seal Sir Urry's torn flesh. The spell is broken.

Sir Urry gets to his feet and stretches. “I've never felt such joy,” he exclaims. “I've never felt this strong.”

“Strong enough to joust?” the king asks. “Strong enough to quest?”

“Tomorrow!” shouts Sir Urry. “And tomorrow!”

But Sir Lancelot? He sobs. Like a weeping wound.