Sword of the Rightful King

  “And I!” Lancelot was standing again.

  “And I!”

  “And I!”

  All around the table, men rose. Some quickly, like Gawaine, some more slowly. But in the end they were all standing, shouting their loyalties into the close air.

  Arthur alone remained seated. But he put his hand up and drew their silence to him. “For the sake of Jesu,” he said, “listen to the whole before you rush in to save my honor.” Then he did a very strange thing. He winked at Merlinnus.

  Merlinnus smiled.

  “Sit down, my friends, my Companions. Sit.” Arthur’s voice pulled the knights back into their seats, though it was another minute before the room was settled enough for Merlinnus to begin again.

  “My lords,” the mage said, “as many of you already know, there has come to us, through some mysterious work of magic, a sword known as Caliburnus that is set in a stone.”

  This startled Gawen. When had the sword acquired a name? Then, smiling at the subtle genius of it, Gawen listened further.

  Merlinnus continued, “It is as if the blade has pierced the very heart of Britain.” A murmur crept around the room, like the shadow of speech, only no words could be discerned. Ignoring the murmur, Merlinnus went on. “Only one man in all of our island can be the surgeon to remove that blade without splitting the stone in twain. I am convinced that man is Arthur. However”—and here he raised the point finger on his right hand dramatically—“however, if there is some other man or boy who can do the deed, I swear that I will follow him instead. And to him I will pledge all my magicks.”

  “And I will follow him as well,” said Arthur. “With all my heart.”

  “What if the Witch of the North draws the sword?” cried Bedwyr. “She may be a woman, but she has the heart of a man. What if she can somehow change this sword and this stone so that one of her own brood can draw it out?”

  Agravaine was on his feet before Hwyll or Gawaine could caution him. In a voice still harsh from the blow his brother had given him, he cried, “Beware how you speak of my mother, old man.”

  But Arthur, too, had risen. “If any of King Lots sons can draw the sword, I will pledge them my kingdom and my life. They have as much right to try as any.”

  “Maybe more,” Agravaine cried harshly, but at Hwyll’s urging, he settled back down on the bench, unaware of the blaze across his older brothers cheeks that bespoke deep shame and embarrassment.

  Arthur turned and spoke directly to Agravaine. “Maybe more, indeed,” he told the boy. “I have never denied it, sir.”

  Agravaine looked stunned at the public admission, his mouth agape. His eyes, Gawen thought, seemed to offer some sort of pledge to the king, though his mouth did not.

  “How do we know this is not a trick sent by an enemy, to divide us one from the other, to separate us from our true king, Arthur?” Sir Lancelot asked, and Arthur turned to face him.

  “I have asked the same, my dearest Companion,” Arthur said. “And Merlinnus has assured me this is true magic, a test, for the good of Britain.” He turned and nodded at the mage, who stared back at him without moving, then the king sat.

  As soon as Arthur was in his seat again, Merlinnus pushed the Siege Perilous to one side and bellied up to the table. He rolled up his right sleeve so that the silver cloth showed. Then he made a fist of his right hand and the veins popped up like old meandering rivers down his wrist, disappearing into the folds of cloth.

  “Who rules Britain must have strength of arm more than the blood of kings.” Merlinnus banged his fist on the Round Table and Gawen jumped at the sound. “What do the Highlander Scotti care if our king’s blood is Uther’s? Or Vortigern’s? Or Lots? Think of the dark little Picts—who is Uther to them? What Saxon will bend the knee to Lots kin? Yet they will all follow power.”

  The men at the table mumbled to one another, and the word power was heard often. Merlinnus waited until they ran out of breath.

  “So the king offers this trial to all the men of Britain,” Merlinnus said. “Whosoever... whosoever shall pull the sword Caliburnus from the stone by the summer Solstice, that time of potent magic, he shall be king of all Britain.”

  The silence that greeted this pronouncement was enormous. It filled the hall.

  Merlin raised a forefinger. “In one month’s time, my lords. The sword from the stone.”

  “So say I,” Arthur boomed.

  “So say all of us,” the men agreed.

  And so it was done.

  27

  Doves

  MORGAUSE SENT WORD by a messenger who carried the doves across water and land. He was three weeks traveling to Cadbury.

  Her assassin met the messenger from the Orkneys in a small inn on the far side of the valley. It was long after dark, and the sky was clouded over so there was neither moon nor star showing.

  The best kind of night for such work, the assassin thought.

  Dank and squat, the inn was scarcely more than a thatched hovel, with a surprisingly large stable for horses.

  Clearly the horses slept better here than any travelers.

  The two men met as prearranged, in one of the empty stalls, the messenger carrying a lantern. In the next stall but one was a roan gelding that whickered softly when they entered, expecting something to eat. It was soon disappointed, for they did not even notice it was there.

  “Have you got them?” Morgause’s man asked.

  “The doos? Aye.” Brushing slate grey hair out of his eyes and grinning, the messenger displayed a mouth full of old soldiers, teeth that were worn down from ill-usage. He settled the lantern on the door casing of the empty stall and pointed inward, farther than where the light illuminated. “They be there, master.”

  Morgause’s man could see nothing, but he had no reason to distrust the messenger.

  “All three of them?”

  “Aye.”

  “Show me.”

  They walked into the stable, and against the wall was a small cage in which the doves nested.

  “Are they healthy?”

  “Aye.” The man was closemouthed, which was good. The queen demanded such in her messengers.

  “Did Queen Morgause give you ought else for me?” It is, the assassin thought, life pulling this man’s worn teeth to get answers from him.

  The messenger licked his lips, then said, “Oh, aye.”

  “Well, out with it, man!”

  “She said that ye maun do what maun be done.” It was a large speech for him. He held out his hand, palm up. Even in the shadows it was possible to see how begrimed the hand was, how splayed the fingers. The hand remained out. Clearly he was expecting further payment than what the queen had already given.

  “That I will.” Before the messenger realized what was coming, Morgause’s man had stuck a knife into his belly and ripped upwards, well past the heart. It was certainly easier than killing the boy, Will, had been. And less messy.

  The messenger fell back, striking his head on the wall, which set the doves to gabbling.

  “Hush, hush, my wee doos,” whispered Morgause’s man. “Dinna fesh yersel’s.” He spoke in the tongue of his mother. “Tha wilna be hurt. Hush. Hush.” All the while he was drawing the knife from the messengers body and wiping the blade on the dead man’s coat. Then he covered the corpse with straw.

  It will buy a little time, he told himself. A little time was all he needed to be gone from there back to Cadbury.

  Taking the cage with the three grey doves, he slipped out of the barn, found his horse, and headed to the castle by going in a large circle and thus disguising his retreat should anyone in the inn be watching.

  No one was.

  In a copse not far from the castle, he took out three small cloth packets from his coat. They contained the messages he had already written to the queen. Quickly he affixed the packets to the right leg of each dove, with hammered steel wire.

  Then, one by one, he took the doves from the cage, gave them each a soft kiss on the head, an
d tossed them into the air.

  After such a long trip in a cage, they needed little urging. Circling the copse several times, the doves got their bearings, and then headed north.

  North toward the Orkneys.

  North toward home.

  One at least, he thought, should get through.

  He then broke the cage into pieces that he threw into the river, remounted, and rode back to Cadbury, arriving well before dawn. The guards were used to his midnight forays. They thought he had a woman in one of the farms nearby, and he had encouraged this belief. He was smiling as he went through the gates.

  “Good night, sir?” asked one of the guards, a bit too familiarly.

  “A very good night,” he said. As indeed it had been.

  THE FIRST DOVE settled to roost on a low willow branch in a small wood by a running stream. It shook itself all over, preened its breast a bit, and had just tucked its head under its wing when a poachers net fell across its shoulders.

  A thin hand caught the net up and wrung the doves neck.

  When the poachers wife began cleaning the bird, she found the packet attached to its leg.

  Since neither she nor her man could read or write, the message meant nothing to them. But they buried the packet and the wire and the message without telling a soul. After all, just catching a bird in the earls wood could bring them their deaths.

  Still, the dove was the tastiest thing they’d had to eat in a long while. The following day, their children enjoyed the thin soup made from the bird’s bones.

  THE SECOND DOVE was nearing the north coast of Scotland when a pigeon hawk in a perilous stoop caught it from above.

  There was an explosion of feathers.

  The hawk carried its prey back to its nest and its hungry nestlings deep in a tangled wood.

  The packet and chain, befouled and torn, became part of the nest, which—when it was deserted—fell to pieces in an awful lightning storm. It would be centuries before that particular woodland was cleared.

  THE THIRD DOVE made the crossing to Orkney without incident. If near-starvation is not counted as an incident.

  It arrived bedraggled and half dead at the door of the little doocoot the queen kept in her tower window.

  Eagerly, Morgause cut the packet from the bird’s leg and settled it in with the others. Then she went to the table to read the message by the light of a candle.

  The dove’s companions quickly pecked it to death, because it did not smell or act like a healthy bird.

  The queen did not notice. She was too busy reading the message the dove had brought from so far away. As she read, she twined her long fingers through her dark hair and her lips moved as if she were eating the words as she read.

  “Merlinnus has conceived a sword stuck in a stone like a knife in cheese. He denies involvement, but who else could have made the thing? The legend on it reads that whosoever pulls the sword out will be king of Britain. Arthur pledges it. ‘Whosoever.’ The date to end the trials is the Solstice.”

  She smiled, serpent and beautiful woman at the same time. “Well, well, well,” she said in a surprisingly sweet voice. Dropping the message onto the table, which was littered with fresh tansy and coltsfoot, she repeated what she had just said. “Well, well, well. So that was what I saw in the water—sword and stone. And the thing to be drawn out by the Solstice. When magic is doubled, and passions, also. Well, well, well.”

  Then she stood up and began to dance around the room, her linen skirts billowing out around her. For a moment she looked like a girl.

  “Merlinnus has made a fatal misstep.” She stopped dancing, caught her breath, and laughed. Suddenly the sweetness was revealed to be sour as unripe fruit. “I will remove this sword from this stone, and with it I will make my son High King.” She cocked her head to one side as if hearing the sword sliding from its stone sheath. “And take the heads of Arthur and his pet mage at the same time.” Then, frowning so hard her forehead became furrowed like a field, she thought, The Solstice. It is but days away. Three weeks and more lost. So little time.

  She crushed the message in her hand, whispered a word of dismissal, then opened the hand slowly, palm toward the ceiling.

  Her hand was empty except for a tiny bit of ash.

  28

  Hand to the Sword

  THAT SAME DAY, far to the south, Gawen sat with the mage and the king around the long oak table, on which about a dozen scrolls lay half unrolled and unread. A kind of light still illumined the sky, a surly blue grey that promised fog, if not rain, in the morning.

  Gawen had to work hard at listening to the conversation and not yawn. Kay had not been the only one to stay up nights guarding the kings door. Gawen had staked out a watching post down the hall the past three weeks since the thief had tried to kill the king. Those nights had taken their toll.

  “When can I draw the sword, this Caliburnus?” the king was asking. “The thing has been in the courtyard for weeks now.”

  Merlinnus sighed and looked over at Gawen. “Tell him, boy.”

  Gawen tried to reconstruct the conversation and failed, and looked blankly at the wizard.

  “Tell him,” Merlinnus said carefully, “why he must wait till the night of the Solstice to put his hand to the sword. And not just because it is that most potent of eves.”

  This, at least, Gawen knew, and leaning forward, said, “Sire, you must wait till the others have all had a go at the sword, or there will be many who will say you shortened their time, compromised the test.” Surely that is the answer Merlinnus wants! Gawen thought.

  Compromised’ it? How, for the Lords sake?” Arthur’s right hand balled into a fist and he struck the table hard. Two of the scrolls rolled off. “Everyone in the kingdom has been invited to try his hand. It is the waiting on them to actually come and do it that is driving me mad.”

  “Some have already tried,” Merlinnus said calmly.

  Arthur’s lips twisted wryly. “Well, a farm boy or two. And a couple of Scotti warriors. And three Picts. Jesu, they are small men! But no one else. It has been three weeks. Why have they not come forward?”

  Merlinnus did not answer but merely leaned over to fetch the scrolls back.

  It was left for Gawen to say. “Your Majesty, perhaps the people do not yet believe it to be true.”

  “Of course it is true. I said it, did I not?” Arthur’s voice was a growl.

  “It is not what is true that matters here,” Gawen answered, glancing at Merlinnus, “but what is seen to be true.” The mage nodded. “Truth is a matter of perception.”

  Arthur’s face suffused with color. “Truth is true. And not just”—now he spoke in a high voice, mimicking Gawen—“a matter of perception.”

  Merlinnus stood and came over to Arthur’s chair. He put his hand into the bosom of his robe and pulled out a wineglass brimming over with Malmseyn. “Drink this, Arthur.”

  “I am not thirsty.”

  “Drink it.”

  “You are evading the question, old man.”

  “Drink it.”

  Arthur took the glass and put it to his lips and drank in a huge draft. “By the bull!” he cried, spitting out what he had drunk. “What is this?”

  The glass was full of nothing more than red ribands, one of which was now sticking to his lips.

  “If I had had you swear a moment before that the glass was red with wine, would you have been speaking the truth?” Merlinnus asked.

  “Yes,” Arthur said begrudgingly. “As I knew it then. But—” He stopped abruptly. Then he roared at the mage, “But it would not have been true.”

  Merlinnus laughed. “You are going to be a great king, Arthur. Not because you know the truth, but because you act as if you do. However, I must caution you—be careful what you drink!” With a flick of his wrist, he made both glass and ribands disappear.

  Gawen had watched silently and with great concentration but could not see where the old wizard had stashed the glass. Thinking it was better not to ask, Ga
wen turned back to the king. “Perhaps, Majesty, you need to issue an order, not an invitation.”

  “The boy has done it again,” Arthur said, suddenly smiling, his face a pleasing landscape after a mighty storm has passed. “Simple, direct. None of your tricksy stuff, old man. I will simply order everyone to try.”

  “Shall I get us some real wine?” Gawen asked brightly, and was sent instead to the kitchen to fetch a pitcher of plain English ale and a slab of cheese.

  LATER, accompanying Merlinnus up to the tower room, Gawen said, “I am puzzled, Magister.”

  “About the glass and the wine?”

  “Yes, and about...”

  “About truth.”

  Gawen nodded.

  “And you believe, my boy, that there is such a thing?”

  “Do you not, Magister? The priests say...”

  They had reached the top of the stairs. The old man fumbled with the keys and then spoke the words of power under his breath. The door creaked open sullenly.

  Merlinnus turned and said quietly, “It is not what I believe, Gawen. It is what I know. There are many truths. A priests truth may not be a kings truth. A king’s truth may not be a kingdom’s truth. And an old mage may be pardoned if he plays a trick or two to secure the peace.”

  He went in and shut the door behind him, leaving Gawen to ponder the fact that the old man had not really offered an answer at all.

  IN THE MORNING Arthur commanded the Companions to come out to the churchyard and for each to put a hand on the sword. Word of it raced through the castle, and by the time the men were assembled, dressed as if for battle, it seemed everyone in Cadbury was there to watch. There were strangers there as well.

  Arthur appeared pleased. The crowd was enormous.

  “Who are all these people?” Gawen asked Merlinnus.

  “All who would be king.”