King of the Middle March (30 page)

Y
OU PROMISED,” SAID MAGGOT. “YOU GAVE US YOUR
word.”

“And you broke yours,” I said.

“We did all we could, sir,” Thomas protested.

“More than,” sniffed Maggot.

“More than, yes. Your mother, she said she couldn't no more. Drizzling and sobbing the whole time.”

“Did you tell her how much I wanted to meet her?” I demanded.

Maggot gizzened, and put her face in mine. “And we gave you her ring and all,” she said. “Didn's we, sir?”

“You only helped me when there was something in it for you,” I said. “My own mother! And you wouldn't tell me anything.”

“That's not true, is it, Maggot? We was helping you.”

“What? By threatening me—me and Lord Stephen—that you'd tell Sir William?”

“Yes, well, it's we what did the hard work, isn't it?”

“The going between,” said Maggot. She wiped her dripping nose on the back of her hand.

“Doing you favors,” grumbled Thomas.

Maggot put her face in mine again so I couldn't even see her straight. “Hard work!” she repeated.

“Digging!” I said loudly.

I didn't mean to, but that's what I said.

Maggot took a step back, and avoided my eye; Thomas peered at me sideways.

“You murdered Emrys,” I said.

“We never,” Thomas said.

“You buried him, then.”

Thomas clucked and shook his head.

“Sir William murdered him in the cellar…,” I said.

“Who told you that?” snapped Thomas.

“The thick walls did,” I said. “No one upstairs would have heard anything.”

“You can't prove that,” said Thomas.

“And I know where you buried him,” I said in a steady voice.

Thomas gave a sudden jerk.

“Near that shelter. On the edge of the wood.”

“No!” shrieked Maggot. “Only because…”

Thomas rounded on Maggot, snarling.

“I know enough to have you both hanged.”

Actually, I knew far less than I was pretending. But it worked. Thomas and Maggot had proved their own guilt.

“How could you?” I asked them. “Emrys was crippled by a wild boar, wasn't he? He couldn't even fight back.”

“We don't know nothing about that,” Thomas muttered.

“I'll give you a choice,” I said. “Find Emrys's bones before I do. Bring them to me. He must be buried in sacred ground. Either that, or I'll accuse you both in court.”

T
HIS LITTLE ROOM, UP HERE UNDER THE THATCH
.

This is where I looked out through the wind-eye and spied the world. Where I looked into my stone, and saw King Arthur born. Where I looked into my own head and heart, and prepared parchment and mixed ink, and tried to find the fitting words.

And this is the slice of the old apple tree Gatty and I carried up here, so I could perch my inkwell on it.

Gatty! Yes, we'll go upstream when you come home. If you want, I'll bring you to Catmole.

Four years have gone by since Merlin gave me my obsidian on the top of Tumber Hill. My seeing stone. This is where I used to hide it, in this gap between these two blocks of stone.

Up here, it seems so quiet. I can hear my own breathing. If I rub my forefinger against the soft wall, I can hear the tiny white flakes fluttering to the floor.

But there was something scratching under the floorboards until I stamped on them. Now it's listening, as I am. April puts her mouth to the wind-eye and blows very gently. In the thatch, I can hear soft purring: the house-martins, maybe, home again and nesting.

Is there anything on this middle-earth better than waking in this little room on a chill April morning, and lying warm under my
sheepskin, and listening to one uncertain whistler, then ten, then a thousand, the whole parliament of birds singing to high heaven?

That's what I did this morning.

Slowly I unrolled the filthy cloth. You can still see it was once saffron.

Ice and fire. With my fingers I pressed the stone against my palm. I looked into its eye.

“The stone's not what I say it is. It's what you see in it.” That's what Merlin told me.

Sir Bedivere is carrying King Arthur on his back.

As if he were a little child.

He plows across the foreshore to the very place where he hurled Excalibur into the waves. Below the shingle-bank, a barge is waiting. Many women wearing black hoods are sitting in it, and as soon as they see the king, they wail and shriek.

“Put me in the barge,” King Arthur says.

Sir Bedivere slithers down the shingle-bank with King Arthur on his back.

The women reach out for him. A crowd of white hands. A cradle of arms. They wrap King Arthur in scarlet and gold cloth and lay his head in the lap of one lady.

“Arthur,” she whispers. “Why have you taken so long? My dear son!”

Her son?

Ygerna! It's Ygerna! I saw her place her hands over her unborn baby, and embrace the whole world. Arthur was taken away from her when he was two days old, and at last he has returned to her.

“Your head wound is so cold,” Ygerna murmurs.

“My lord Arthur!” cries Sir Bedivere. “My king! Without you, what will become of me?”

The king gazes at Sir Bedivere. His eyes are dim.

“Here and alone?”

“I can no longer help you,” the king says quietly. “You must trust in yourself.”

Again, all the women in the boat keen. With their fingernails they shred their gowns.

“If Sir Lancelot sails home, tell him of my need of him when I fought Sir Mordred. Tell him I always loved him.”

Sir Bedivere grips the gunwale. He cannot let the king go.

“I will cross the water, and go into the hill,” says Arthur-in-thestone. “I will sleep a long sleep, and many knights will sleep there with me. I will sleep and heal. I will heal and wake, and march out of the hill, and drive all my enemies back into the sea. I am Arthur, son of Uther and Ygerna. The king who was and will be.”

Now the oarsmen lean forward. They pull.…

Sir Bedivere's fingers loosen their grip.

Away across the stabbing silver wavelets the barge glides.

Ahead of it now, a hill begins to rise. First grey-blue and misty, like something in the mind long forgotten. Now green, grass-green and growing.

It humps its back. High!

Tumber Hill!

I
NEVER REALIZED! I NEVER SUPPOSED ARTHUR WAS THE
Sleeping King.

Now I know he's not in Caer Caradoc. Or Weston. Or Panpunton. He's here in Tumber Hill.

Where he and Guinevere held their wedding feast.

In the hall everyone was still asleep. Sian and Grace, Slim, Tanwen and Kester, Ruth, Robbie. I snapped my fingers and Tempest and Storm jumped up.

It was so light outside. So bright.

First I walked right round the bottom of the hill, keeping my eyes open for any sign of an opening. That took a long time. Maybe it's higher up. There must have been a lake here once. I'll go on searching.…

Then I hurried to the little green glade and my climbing-tree. I remembered the wandering scholar reading in the glade near Verona. I sat in my high perch amongst all the beech leaves just bursting out of their wrappings.

I ran up to the crown of the hill. I stood and stared out across the whole world of our Middle March. The row of beehives. The shining stream. Our scarlet flag dancing. Gatty's cottage, empty now. Pike Forest, the shadowy hills. The way to Catmole.

The hounds chased round in giddy circles, barking themselves hoarse.

Somehow I left all my fears and sorrows at the bottom of the hill. My head and my heart swelled with such high happiness. I opened my whole self, and shouted.

Lady Alice met me as I came down.

“Leaping like a deer! How do you do it?”

“Yard-skills!” I gasped.

“Now, Arthur! I want you to come to Gortanore as soon as you can.”

“I will!”

“But before that, I've arranged for you to meet your mother.”

“My mother!”

Lady Alice nodded. “Mair,” she said gently. “You've waited so long.”

“When?” I panted.

“Tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow! Where?”

“Where do you suppose?”

“The Green Trunk?”

Lady Alice smiled.

S
HE WAS THERE ALREADY
.

Sitting on the Green Trunk.

She was wearing a straw hat, and her head was bowed. Her hands were joined. They lay in her lap like a white dove.

I had this thought: that she had always been there, only before I'd been unable to see her.

Very quietly I dismounted. I didn't take my eyes off her but, out of the corner of my eye, I thought I saw someone else slipping away between the trees into the green gloom. Lady Alice?

She sat as still and patient as Mary on my ring.

I let go of Pip's reins and stepped up to her.…

All the way from Caldicot to the Green Trunk, I kept thinking how long it's taken to meet my mother but how I would have gone on forever, because nothing mattered so much.

Pip's cantering hooves drummed my own heartbeat; it sang out the words that have driven me on: Winnie announcing, “Everyone needs to know who their own mother is,” and Gatty saying she'd search just the same as me, and Lord Stephen saying, “Your mother is your mother and you should find her.”

…and very slowly she looked up.

Her violet eyes.

Wide and waiting.

Her Ygerna-eyes deep as the little wood-violets that grow round the fringes of Pike Forest. Her almond-shaped face.

I gasped. “I've seen you before.”

She gazed at me, unblinking.

“In my stone. I can't explain it. Well, I will!”

She swallowed. Her breasts heaved.

“You are…I mean, you are my mother?”

Slowly, gently, she nodded.

Her eyes were filling with tears.

“I've thought and thought of all the things I'd say, and what I'd say first, and what I wanted to say most, and now I can't think of one thing.”

“I've seen you every day,” she whispered.

“Every day?”

“Looking like you did on my ring. Giving me that apple.”

We both wept then. I drew her up and pulled her to me, and by mistake I knocked off her straw hat, and we sobbed and howled. I never knew there was such pain.

I kept screwing up my eyes. Trying to stop.

She was so small. So slight. Just a scrap.

“They…they…”

She couldn't say the words. Her sobbing and gasping kept getting in the way.

“They…they said you were sickly and died.”

My mother's whole body was shuddering.

“I…I thought they murdered you,” she said.

“I'm here,” I said. “I'm here. I'm here.”

“They wouldn't let me see you,” my mother said, and I could hear the lovely Welsh lilt in her voice.

“Who?” I asked.

“They wouldn't tell me anything about you.”

She trembled, as if she had caught a fever.

I sniffed, and somehow inside me I began to feel more calm again; the calm spread right through my heart, then my head. I held my mother to me, warm and quivering.

“It's all right,” I said. “Sir William's dead. You do know that. Don't you?”

“It's them,” she gulped.

“Who? You mean Thomas and Maggot?”

My mother pressed her head against my chest.

“They can't hurt you. Not any longer.” I could hear my voice was hoarse.

Suddenly my mother jerked away from me. Her face was cracked and glistening.

“I loved you!” she cried. “I loved you so much! I never wanted Sir William! I didn't. But that doesn't mean I didn't want you.” She grabbed my shoulders. “You never thought that?”

“I…I wasn't sure,” I said.

“I wanted you! I loved you!” my mother cried. “I didn't want you to be taken away. I couldn't bear it!”

“I think I've been waiting all my life to hear that,” I said huskily.

Mair. My own blood-mother. Her own son. We were inside-out somersaulters. Dreamers, red-eyed and waking.

“I thought you might be like Sir William,” she said in a low voice.

Fiercely I shook my head. “I've kept trying to find you,” I said. “From the day Sir John—Sir William's brother—told me about you. I came here before to meet you, you know.”

I rubbed my sore eyes and my mother looked at me.

“Your ears stick out like mine,” she said, wonderingly. “I've longed to know what you looked like.”

“Once I thought I was growing a tail,” I said. “I was afraid.”

My mother laughed and sobbed, both at the same time. “You're so handsome,” she said.

“You live at Catmole?” I asked her.

My mother nodded.

“Lord Stephen told me,” I said. “He was my lord, and he wanted me to meet you. He and Lady Alice. You do know Catmole's…well…you know it will be mine now?”

My mother looked anxious.

“I can go away,” she said in a low voice.

“Go away?”

“I will. If it's difficult.”

“Away? Never!”

My mother stared at me.

“Not now! Not ever!” I shouted.

She smiled the ghost of a smile. “You'll scare the birds away!” she said.

“Listen to them!” I cried. “Each one of them! That lark! Singing its heart out!”

R
IDING TO THE GREEN TRUNK, I WAS SO EAGER AND
anxious: It felt as if I were making the whole journey while holding my breath.

But after I promised my mother I'd come to Catmole soon, very soon; after she reassured me she'd be waiting for me, and stepped away into the gloom so lightly…

I felt very strong as I rode to Gortanore. And very tired too. I didn't want any more to happen! Twice, I almost fell asleep in the saddle.

Haket, Lord Stephen's priest, was right when he told me many people behave like animals. I've seen that for myself. But surely he was wrong in saying none of us can enter Jerusalem until everyone is truly Christian in word and deed.

Jesus was merciful. He died on the cross to redeem my sins.

And Sir Perceval, Sir Galahad, and Sir Bors: They quested in the wilderness, and suffered, and achieved the Holy Grail not for themselves but for each of us.

Sister Cika told me Saracens and Jews believe a person who saves the life of another saves the whole world. I believe that too.

I believe each of us can make a difference.

It's people like Wido and Godard and Giff, following each other
like cattle, never questioning, never thinking for themselves, becoming numb to bloodshed and other people's pain, who turn our world into a wasteland.

Sir John's right. Each person does have his own position, her own duties—in a family, a manor, a kingdom. But what I want at Catmole is one fellowship. One ring of trust. I want everyone in the manor to know we all need each other and each one of us makes a difference.

That doesn't mean there won't be cheating and complaints and arguments and rivalries and anger. Of course there will.

But there are all kinds of ways of preventing and punishing without spilling blood, aren't there?

That boy in the mangonel, and the Venetian whose nose I sheared off, and Nasir and Zangi and the women with no names: Not one day passes without my seeing them.

I think I was wrong to threaten Thomas and Maggot with hanging. I knew it the moment I said it. After Sir John struck off Lankin's left hand, all Caldicot suffered and festered for a long time.

Sometimes I think how Saladin could easily have killed the Christian pilgrims who journeyed to the Holy Land, but he chose what was honorable and much more difficult: He gave them safe passage.

My stone! My seeing stone!

I've seen in it my own thoughts and feelings. All I hope to be; all I must never be.

I've seen my mother in it. And Tom, and Winnie, and Serle, and Merlin…

But the last time I looked, I couldn't see anything in my stone at all.

King Arthur has gone into the hill.

“Without you, what will become of me?” Sir Bedivere cried.

What will become of him?

And Sir Lancelot! Will he sail back from France after he hears Sir Gawain's letter?

What will happen to the half-moon, lying on her back—the shining rock crystal with the names of all the knights cut round the rim?

What will happen to Queen Guinevere?

There's so much to discuss now with Tom and Lady Alice.

About Winnie, of course, but before that we have to divide Sir William's land and livestock and belongings. Tom hasn't seen the manor in Champagne; he has never left the Middle March. And I've never seen Catmole.

“Why don't you ride over there first?” Lady Alice said. “Before we bloat our heads with arrangements and numbers and duties and everything.”

“On my own?”

“You're ready, aren't you? You've proved yourself.” Lady Alice smiled. “They're waiting to welcome you.”

“Do you know,” I said, “just before he died he slung an arm round my shoulders?”

“Who?” Tom asked.

“Sir William. It's the only time he ever did anything like that.” I
shook my head. “Even then, it may just have been because I was walking too fast!”

“Oh Arthur!” said Lady Alice. She touched my right cheek. “Only you would say that.”

“Anyhow, he was complaining about all the delays and arguments in Zara, and about being sixty-eight, and maybe not…not seeing you again. And then he began to talk about Catmole. I can remember exactly what he said:

“‘The river in loops. The shapely mound, yes, the manormound, and the greenness of the green in the water-meadows. I'd be glad to ride there again, boy.'”

The three of us leaned forward a little and looked steadily at one another. Then Tom laid his right hand over Lady Alice's hand, and I laid my left hand over Tom's.

We drew ourselves up and smiled.

“It's a strange name,” said Tom. “Catmole.”

“Not really,” I replied.

I remembered how I said “Catmole, Catmole” to myself over and again, almost three years ago now, and how all the letters began to seethe: catmole, catmole…cometale…mot…malecot…elmcoat…comelat…camelot…

Camelot!

“Good!” Lady Alice said. “It's decided, then. I'll send a messenger.”

“Not Thomas,” I said.

“Certainly not!” Lady Alice exclaimed. “I've told Thomas and Maggot not to go anywhere near the place, and they know what will happen if they do.”

Tom drew his forefinger across his throat, and grinned.

“They've got work to do for you here, haven't they?” Lady Alice asked.

“Did they tell you?” I asked.

“What work?” asked Tom.

“I told them to find Emrys's bones,” I said. “Before I do.”

“They asked me to tell you they can help you…,” Lady Alice began.

“That's what they always say.”

“…and give you what you wanted.”

“Oh!”

“Yes,” Lady Alice said very brightly. “A messenger. I'll send myself! I'll ride over to Catmole early, and tell everyone you're coming.”