my hand. Flesh and blood like yours.’ The hand that touched the boy’s face was warm and rough, rough like his father’s fisherman’s hands. ‘See?’
‘But King Arthur – it’s all just stories, a myth.’
‘A myth, you say! A myth! Do you hear that, Bercelet? Your master’s a myth.’ He turned to the boy again. ‘You have heard of me then?’
‘Yes,’ said the boy. ‘A little. The sword, in the lake.’
‘Excalibur. Is that all you know? Well, whilst we’re waiting for your clothes to dry, you shall hear the rest. It’s a long story, a story of great love, of great tragedy, of magic and mystery, of hope, of triumph and of disaster. It is my story, but not only my story. In those empty chairs you see about the Round Table, there once sat a company of knights, the finest, bravest men this world has ever seen. And they were my friends too. I’ll tell you about them, I’ll tell you about me. Lie back now and rest.’
He patted the bed beside him, and Bercelet jumped up and stretched out beside the boy. He sighed deeply and licked his paw. ‘I know, Bercelet, you’ve heard it all before, haven’t you? And besides, you were there – for most of it anyway.’ The dog closed his eyes and sighed again. ‘Well, the boy hasn’t heard it, so you’ll just have to put up with it. I’ll begin at the beginning, when I was a boy and not much older than you are now.’
Arthur Pendragon sat down by the fire, stared into it for a moment, and then began.
2 NOBODY’S CHILD
I LOOK AT YOU AND SEE MYSELF AS THE CHILD I once was, a dreamer, a wanderer. I have to strain to remember the castle where I grew up, the bed I slept in, the table I ate at. But I can still see clear in my mind the wild forests of Wales and the wind-blasted mountains above them where I passed my early years. And they were carefree, those years. I had a mother for my best friend, and a father for my constant companion and teacher. He taught me how to hunt, to stalk silently, to kill cleanly. From him I learnt how to handle a hawk, to sweeten in a fox, to hold a bow without a tremble as I pulled it taut, and to use a sword and a spear as a knight should. But from my mother I learnt the great things. I learnt what is right, what is wrong, what should be and what should not be – lessons I am still learning even now, my friend. I never in my life have loved anyone more than my mother, and I think I never hated anyone more than my elder brother Kay.
Kay was six years older than I was and the bane of my young life. Time and again he would foist the blame for his own misdeeds on to my shoulders, for ever trying to turn Father against me – and in this he often succeeded. I would find myself banished to my room or whipped for something I had not done. I can see now the triumphant sneer in my brother’s eyes. But with Mother he was never able to taint me. She would never hear a word against me, from Kay or from Father. She was my constant ally, my rock.
But she died. She died when I was just twelve years old. As she lay on her deathbed, her eyes open and unseeing, I reached out to touch her cheek for the last time. Kay grasped my arm and pulled me back.
‘Don’t you dare touch her,’ he said, eyes blazing. ‘She’s my mother, not yours. You don’t have a mother.’ I appealed to Father and saw the flicker in his eye that told me that Kay was speaking the truth.
‘Kay,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘How can you say such a thing now, and with your mother lying still warm in death? What I told you, I told you in trust. How can you be so cruel? And you a son of mine.’
‘And me?’ I said. ‘Am I not a son of yours too? Was she not my mother?’
‘Neither,’ said Father, and he looked away from me. ‘I would have told you before, but could never bring myself to do it.’
‘Then,’ I cried, ‘if I am not yours, and if I am not hers, whose am I? I can’t be nobody’s child.’
He took me by the shoulders. ‘Dear boy,’ he said, and he suddenly looked an old man, ‘I cannot tell you who you are. All I know is that you were brought here as a newborn baby by Merlin. It was Merlin who made me promise to keep you, to protect you and to bring you up as I would my own son and this I have done to my very best. If there have been times when I was hard on you, then it was because I always had that promise to fulfil.’
‘Merlin?’ I asked. ‘Who is this Merlin?’
Kay scoffed at that. ‘Do you do nothing but dream? Everyone knows who Merlin is. He’s the maker of the old druid magic, a weaver of spells, a soothsayer. He knows what will happen, long before it does happen. He knows everything that has been and everything that will be. Why he bothered with you I can’t imagine.’
I turned to Father. ‘Is this all true? I was brought here by this Merlin? My mother is not my mother? You are not my father?’ He nodded and I could see the pain in his face reflecting my own. But Kay had to rub more salt in the wound.
‘So you see,’ he crowed. ‘You are a bastard, a foundling. You should be grateful we took you in.’
At that my blood was up. Small though I was, I felled him with one blow and I would have done him more damage had not Father pulled me off him.
‘That is not the way I have taught you, Arthur,’ he said, still holding me back. But I broke free of him and ran off into the forest. There I wandered for days and days like some wounded animal, maddened with pain.
I found myself sometime later in a hidden valley covered with a purple mist of bluebells, and a stream running softly over the stones. Faint with hunger and thirst, I lay down and drank my fill. And as I drank, I thought. I had heard of old men and old women who have no longer the will to go on living, who would seek out just such a hidden place and lie down to die, to be eaten by wolves, and to be picked clean by crows. There on the bank among the bluebells I decided to lie down and never get up again. I closed my eyes and began the sleep of death. I was not afraid. I would join Mother and leave the misery of this world behind me.
Deep in my troubled dreams I heard the approach of an animal picking its way through the bluebells, splashing through the stream. I felt hot breath on my face, and knew I was not in my dream any more. I braced myself for the shaking and tearing I knew I would have to endure before I died. I opened my eyes, curious to see the wolf that would finish me. He stood over me, his tongue drooling, his great grey eyes blinking lazily. It was no wolf but a deerhound; and then a voice was calling him off. An old man in rags, a beggarman he seemed to be, was fording the stream, barefoot on the stones and leaning on a staff to steady himself against the current. I struggled in my weakness to push the dog off me.
‘You’re a new smell,’ said the beggarman. ‘Don’t worry, Bercelet will not harm you.’ And he came and sat down heavily beside me. ‘Have you anything to give a poor beggarman?’ he asked. I shook my head, for I had nothing. He went on. ‘Then at least give me some of your time. Time costs nothing and a young man like yourself has enough of it to spare. You have a long life ahead of you, longer than you know, longer even than you may want. Since the High King Utha died I have wandered this land from end to end. I see around me nothing but ruin and desolation. Everywhere I find greed and famine, hand in hand and prospering. I see a kingdom divided and weakened. I see lords and kings squabbling like sparrows amongst themselves. And, as they fight, the Picts and the Scots come down from the north country, pillaging and burning at will, and the Irish and the cursed Saxons pour in their hordes from across the seas and we are defenceless before them. They take our towns, our villages, our farms. They burn our churches, they enslave our people and we can do nothing, for the heart has gone out of us. We are a people entirely without hope.’ He looked around him. ‘You see this valley of bluebells? It all began here a thousand, two thousand years ago maybe, with just one fine bluebell that grew strong and proud. And then one by one others sprang up around it and a valley of thicket and bramble was turned into this paradise on Earth. You can grow to be just such a flower, and then others would follow you. It only takes one. Think no more of dying, young man. Look around you, and wonder what one flower can do and know then what one man can do. All Britain could be as fine as this wood.