The King Arthur Trilogy Read online

  When he reached the garth of the abbey church he dismounted and hitched his cob to the gate and went in. The fresh snow lay among the tombstones, and in the midst of the tall black sentinel towers of the yew trees the pavilion glowed crimson as a rose at Midsummer; and the sword stood lonely in its anvil on the great stone, for even the ten knights were gone to the jousting.

  Then Arthur took the sword two-handed by its quillions. There was golden writing on the stone, but he did not stop to read it. The sword seemed to thrill under his touch as a harp thrills in response to its master’s hand. He felt strange, as though he were on the point of learning some truth that he had forgotten before he was born. The thin winter sunlight was so piercing-bright that he seemed to hear it; a high white music in his blood.

  He drew the sword from the anvil in one familiar-seeming movement as though from a well-oiled sheath. And he ran back to the gate where his cob waited, and made all haste back towards the tournament field. The crowds in the streets were thinning now, and in only a short while he reached the place where Sir Kay had turned aside, sitting his horse in a fret, to wait for him.

  ‘This is not my sword,’ Kay said, as Arthur thrust it into his hand.

  ‘I could not get in, the place was locked up – I came on this one by chance, in the abbey garth, sticking in a great stone –’

  Kay looked at the sword again. He was suddenly very white. Then he wheeled his horse and began thrusting through the crowd towards Sir Ector, who had ridden on ahead. Arthur followed hard behind.

  ‘Sir,’ said Kay, when he reached his father, ‘here is the sword out of the stone; here in my hand. It must be that I am the true High King of Britain.’

  But Sir Ector looked at his son steadily and kindly, and from him to Arthur and back again, and said, ‘Let us go back to the church.’

  And when the three of them had dismounted and gone into the great echoing church, all glimmering with tapers for Candlemas, he made Kay put his hand on the Bible, and said, ‘Now tell me in all truth, how you came by this sword.’

  And Kay turned from white to red, and said, ‘My brother Arthur brought it to me.’

  Sir Ector turned to his foster son, and asked, ‘How came you by this sword?’

  Arthur, troubled because he could not think what Kay had meant when he said that he must be High King of Britain, but still not remembering, said, ‘Kay sent me to fetch his sword, but the lodging was empty and locked up, and I could not think what to do – and then I thought me of this sword in the church garth, and it was serving no useful purpose there, while Kay needed a sword, so I pulled it out and brought it to him.’

  ‘Were there any knights standing by, who saw you do the thing?’ asked Sir Ector.

  Arthur shook his head. ‘No one.’

  ‘Then,’ said Sir Ector, ‘put the sword back in its place.’

  And when Arthur had done so, Sir Ector tried to draw it out again, and could not shift it. And then at his order Kay tried, but with no better success. ‘Now do you draw it forth again, Fosterling,’ he said. And Arthur, greatly wondering what all the to-do was about, drew the sword again, as easily as he had done the first time.

  Then Sir Ector knelt down before him, and bowed his head, and Kay also, though more slowly; and Arthur, beginning to remember and trying not to, and suddenly more afraid than ever he had been in his life before, cried out, ‘Father – Kay – why do you kneel to me?’

  ‘Because you have drawn the sword from the stone, and it is ordained by God Himself that none shall do that save he who is rightfully High King of Britain.’

  ‘Not me!’ Arthur said. ‘Oh, not me!’

  ‘I never knew whose son you were when Merlin brought you to me for fostering,’ said Sir Ector. ‘But I know now that you were of higher blood than I thought you.’

  ‘Get up!’ said Arthur. ‘Oh sir, get up! I cannot bear that you should kneel to me, you who have been my father all these years!’ And when Sir Ector would not, he dropped on to his knees also, to be on a level with the old man again.

  ‘I kneel to my liege lord,’ said Sir Ector. ‘I will serve you in all things and keep true faith with you. Only be a gentle lord to me, and to Kay your foster brother.’

  ‘Kay shall be Seneschal of all my lands, if I be King indeed,’ said Arthur. ‘And how could I be any but a gentle lord to you whom I love. And for the rest – I will serve God and the realm of Britain with the best that is in me. Only get up now, for indeed I cannot bear it!’ And he covered his face with his hands and wept as though his heart would break.

  Then Sir Ector and Sir Kay got up, and Arthur himself last of all; and they went to the Archbishop and told him of what had happened, and as the word spread, knights and nobles came pouring up from the tournament ground, demanding that they should also try for the sword, as was their right; and Arthur set it back into the stone, and one after another, they tried without avail.

  Yet they would not accept that a boy not yet come to his knighthood, and with no proof of his fathering, should be king over them. And so the Archbishop ordained another gathering at Easter, and then yet another at Pentecost, and to each of these the great lords swarmed in to try again; but none could draw the sword save Arthur. And at last the people cried that they were weary of this striving, and would have Arthur for their king.

  Then Arthur took his sword across both hands and offered it before the altar in the abbey church, and received his knighthood of the Archbishop. And that same day the Archbishop set the crown upon his head.

  The royal circlet pressed down upon his forehead, with all the weight of the fear and bewilderment that had been with him ever since he had first drawn the sword from the stone; so that it was all he could do to hold his head high as he turned to confront the knights and nobles who crowded the body of the great church. And then he became aware that as the Archbishop Dubricius stood beside him on his right, somebody else was with him on his left – a tall man in a dark mantle, with hair on his head like black ruffled feathers. Arthur did not know who he was; but it was clear that the Archbishop knew, and Sir Ector his foster father standing close by, and many others in the church, and that even those who did not know felt the power that flowed from him like light from a torch or the spreading quiver in the air from a lightly tapped drum.

  There was faint stirring and shifting among the crowd, and a whisper began to go round, ‘Merlin! It is Merlin!’ ‘He was with Utha and Ambrosius; often I saw him!’ ‘It is Merlin, the magician!’

  And one of the great lords, leader of many fighting men, who had had high hopes of his own claim to the crown, shouted, ‘It is Merlin and not God who has chosen for us this beardless boy to be our new king!’

  And another joined him, as hound bays after hound, ‘Aye, it is nought but Merlin’s dream-weaving, this magic of a sword in a stone!’

  Standing so still that save for his back-falling sleeve, not a fold of his dark mantle stirred, Merlin raised his arm, and silence flowed out from him the length and breadth of the church. Only a faint murmur seemed to hang between the pillars and in the emptiness under the high arched roof like the echo of the sea in a shell. And into the silence, Merlin lifted up his voice and spoke.

  ‘Listen now, oh people of Britain, and you shall know the truth. Truth that has been hidden from you many years until the time should come for you to hear it. Here stands your High King, true and rightful son of Utha Pendragon and his Queen Igraine; born to be the greatest king that Britain has ever known, born to drive back the enemies of the realm further even than the Pendragon drove them in his day. Born to bring that brightness between the Dark and the Dark that men shall remember beyond the mists of time and call the Kingdom of Logres. He was God’s choice, not mine, but it was given to me to know him, before he was born, before even his kingstar hung in the sky, and to do what must be done to bring him safely to this day!’

  And standing still with his hand raised, he told the whole story of the dragon in the sky, and of Arthur’s birth, and ho
w he had taken the child and given him to Sir Ector’s fosterage to be brought up in safety from the troubles that followed his father’s death, until the time came for him to take the crown and the sword.

  When he had done, he lowered his hand, and, as though it was a signal, the uproar broke out again, but now it swelled into a roar of acclamation; and men were shouting, ‘Utha’s son! Utha’s son!’

  And in the midst of the shouting the tall man in the dark cloak turned his head and looked at the boy beside him; and Arthur found himself looking back, into strange golden eyes that were not like the eyes of any mortal man that he had met before. And yet as he looked into them he seemed to remember for a moment a beggar by the inn doorway that Candlemas morning that now seemed a lifetime ago, and a stray harper playing by the fire in the hall of his old home, and a travelling tinker, and a wounded soldier making his way home from the wars. The rags of memory were gone before he could lay hold of them. But with them, all the fear and bewilderment went from his mind. The sorrow for the loss of his old life remained, but it no longer mattered. Suddenly his head was clear and his heart strong within him; and he knew that whatever he had to do in this new life, he could do it.

  ‘Speak to them,’ said Merlin, beside him.

  And Arthur spoke, lifting up his voice clear for all the knights and nobles in the great church, and the people thronging beyond the open door, and for all the people of Britain. ‘I am your King! I will keep faith with you. Do you keep faith with me! When this feast of Pentecost is over let us gather our forces, and together we will drive back the Sea Wolves and the men of the North who ravage these lands! We will free the realm of the strife and the fire and the sword that have torn it apart in the years since my father’s death. You and I together, let us make this a good land, where men do not rule only because they are strong, but where men are strong for the Right, none the less! Give me your love and your faithkeeping, oh people of Britain, and I will give you mine through all the days of my life!’

  And there was no more shouting and acclamation; only a deep silence in the great church. But it was a good silence; and the tall man with the golden eyes smiled, as one that is well content.

  3

  The Sword from the Lake

  FROM THE DAY of his crowning, Merlin was always beside the new High King, as he had been with his father Utha before him. And with Merlin to advise and council him, Arthur Pendragon gathered his war hosts and thrust back the Saxons and the Picts and the men from over the Irish Sea. And he led his men also across the Narrow Seas to Less Britain to aid King Ban and King Bors of Benwick, who had sheltered Ambrosius and Utha after their father was slain, when they in their turn were beset by enemies on their borders.

  And when all this was done, and it seemed as though there might be peace for a while, he made his capital at Camelot. And some people say the place where Camelot once stood is now the city of Winchester, and some that Cadbury Hill is what remains of it today; but no man knows for sure where the towers of Camelot once rose, just as no man knows for sure the last sleeping-place of Arthur the King.

  But wherever his capital might be, neither Arthur nor his knights were left long to be at peace in it. For the dust of the fighting was scarcely sunk and the wounds were scarcely healed, when eleven lesser kings from the outland and mountain places along the fringes of Britain gathered each their war hosts and came against the new High King. King Lot of Orkney and King Nantres of Garlot, King Anguish of Ireland and King Idris of Far Cornwall and King Uriens of Gore and six more beside, they gathered to the great forest that furred all the mid-lands of Britain, and there laid siege to the great Castle of Bedegraine which was one of Arthur’s chiefmost strongholds, meaning to make it their headquarters against him.

  Then, by the advice of Merlin, Arthur sent word into Less Britain, to King Bors and King Ban of Benwick; and they in their turn came with their fighting men; and together they raised the siege of Bedegraine, and overthrew the eleven kings and drove them back into their own mountains and away over the Irish Seas, all save those who sued for peace and swore their fealty to the High King.

  But no sooner was that done with, and Bors and Ban were away to their own lands once more, than word came from King Leodegraunce of Camelaird who was of Arthur’s following, that Rience of North Wales made war upon him and pressed him sore. And again Arthur gathered his war hosts and marched to the aid of his vassal.

  Six days they were on the march, and when he heard that they were coming, Rience laughed, and swirled about him his great war-cloak that was fur-bordered with the beards of kings and princelings that he had overcome; and he made ready to meet them upon the skirts of Snowdon and make an end of them.

  But when they came together, it was the war host of Rience the tyrant which broke and scattered; and Arthur rode victorious into Camelaird town.

  And when, in a few days, his men being rested, he rode south again, he carried with him not only another victory, but something that went deeper with him, though he did not know it, and was to remain with him all his days. For in the high-walled garden of the castle there, he saw Guenever, King Leodegraunce’s daughter, for the first time. She was sitting with her ladies, and all of them weaving garlands of honeysuckle and columbine and the little loose-petalled Four-Seasons roses to braid into their hair. The Princess’s hair was black with a shimmer of copper where the sun caught it, and her eyes, when she looked up from the flowers in her lap, were grey-green as willow leaves and full of cool shadows.

  And Arthur saw all this; but she was scarcely more than a child, and though he was but eighteen himself, he was feeling very old, old and weary with his hard-won victories and the deaths of men. And though they gave each other one long grave look before her father swept him on his way, he thought no more of that first encounter after he rode south again, than that he had seen a girl making a flower-chain in the King’s garden.

  Yet something of him was changed from that moment. Something in him that had been asleep before, began to stir and to ache, longing for – he did not know what. Almost he forgot, as time went by, but never quite, until the time came for him to remember fully once again.

  Arthur rode south to his great castle of Caerleon. And while he was there, Margawse his half-sister, she who was Queen to King Lot of Orkney, came to spy out for her husband the secrets and the strengths and weaknesses of his realm. She came, no man knowing who she was, as a noble lady on a journey, seeking a night’s shelter for herself and her ladies and escorting men-at-arms. And Arthur, who had never seen her before, did not know her either, and gave her courteous welcome.

  Merlin could have warned him, but for once Merlin was not at his side but had gone north on a visit to his old master who had reared and trained him. Cabal, Arthur’s favourite hunting dog, growled and raised the hackles on his neck when she came near, but Arthur paid no heed, only thrust him back with his heel and ordered him from the Great Hall lest he frighten their guest.

  That evening they made merry in the Great Hall in honour of the lady’s coming, and when supper was over, the harpers made their music that was as sweet as the music of the Hollow Hills. But the night was heavy, full of thunder in the air, and the torches in their wall-sconces burned tall and unwavering; and by and by, the lady said, ‘My Lord King, the night is overheavy within doors, and there is no air to breathe; is there a garden in this castle?’

  ‘There is a garden behind the keep,’ Arthur said, ‘it will be cooler there.’

  ‘Then by your leave, I and my maidens will walk alone there in the dusk.’

  And so the lady and her maidens went out to the garden; and in the Great Hall the harpers played on, and the pages set out the boards for chess, and cleared the floor for the games that the young knights and the squires played after supper.

  But in a while one of the pages came to Arthur and whispered, ‘Sir, the lady asks that you go to her in the garden, for she bears a message for you which she says cannot be spoken here in the crowded Hall.’

/>   So Arthur got up and went quietly from the Hall, and down the narrow stairway in the wall and through the postern door that gave on to the castle garden. The air was like warm milk, and the scent of honeysuckle and sweet briar hung heavy between the high walls, and the full moon was pale and blurred in the hazy sky. And in the entrance to the vine-trained arbour at the far end, the lady waited for him, quite alone, for all her maidens it seemed were gone.

  Queen Margawse was twice as old as he was; she had borne four sons to the King of Orkney, and the eldest of them, Gawain, was not much younger than Arthur himself; but he neither knew nor cared for that. Something to do with another garden was stirring at the back of his heart, waking an old longing and loneliness in him. And she was very beautiful. He had seen how beautiful in the light of the Hall torches, and he saw it still more now in the blurred lily-light of the moon; beautiful with a warm richness like ripe fruit, and the scent of musk and rose-oil came from the folds of her gown and her unbraided hair.

  Her hands were held out to him; and Arthur took them, and never remembered to ask her what was the message she brought, that could not be told in the crowded Hall.

  Why she did it, there can never be any knowing; for she knew, though he did not, what kin they were to each other (but for herself, she had never cared for any law save the law of her own will). Maybe she thought to have a son to one day claim the High Kingship of Britain. Maybe it was just revenge; the revenge of the Dark People, the Old Ones, whose blood ran strong in her, upon the Lords of Bronze and Iron, and the People of Rome, who had dispossessed them. Maybe it was because she had never loved King Lot and dreaded growing old, and Arthur was young and good to look upon. Maybe she thought it might help her in her spying. Maybe it was all these things mingled together …