by J A Cummings
That evening, just after dinner had been served, a boisterous knight in dented armor and a bearskin cloak arrived, mounted on a rough-looking horse that seemed more suited to a plow than to a battlefield. He was tall and broad, easily twice the size of some other men. In addition to his sword, which no knight would ever be without, he had a double-headed axe strapped to his back and a bushy blond beard shot through with grey. His eyes seemed eternally youthful, though, icy chips of blue in his sunburned face.
Sir Ector and the other knights greeted him with hearty embraces and shouts of happiness. Laughter rang through the keep, and Kay hurried to meet the newcomer. Arthur held back.
“Boys, this is Sir Ulfius. He is of Norse blood, but he has been in Britannia for many years, first in service to King Uther and then as a knight errant,” Sir Ector introduced.
Ulfius put his hands on Kay’s shoulders and spoke in a loud voice that rang off the keep’s stone walls. “You must be the young man about to get his spurs.”
Kay puffed. “I am.”
“Well, congratulations, young man. The world is about to open to you in ways you would never begin to guess.” His eyes traveled over Kay’s shoulder and settled on Arthur, and when he saw the somber cast to the youth’s face, his smile dimmed somewhat. He said nothing and turned back to his host. “Sir Ector, I see that my arrival is timely. Will you set another place at your table?”
“Of course. You need never ask.” Aithne and the other servants were already placing a charger and a tankard near the other knights’ places. Ector clapped Ulfius on the shoulder and guided him to the bench. “It seems that your special talent is arriving just as meat to set out on the table.”
The newcomer grinned. “It is my blessing and my curse.”
“Curse?” Kay said. “Why would it be a curse?”
“Ask my horse that question!” he guffawed.
Arthur came forward and filled his tankard with ale, and the knight took it without a glance or a word. He gestured with his mug and said, “This place never changes.”
Ector smiled. “Do you mean Caer Gai in particular, or something more general?”
“Ah, I mean Britannia. There are a dozen little wars about to start, and chieftains quarreling with other chieftains, as it has always been. It seems that having a High King for twelve years did nothing to contain the wicked ways of contentious men.”
Brastias snorted. “You can’t tell me that you object. You’ve gotten rich on the pay from those contentious men.”
“Indeed I have,” the blond knight agreed. “And I hope to continue to gain wealth in the same way for years to come.”
Illtyd turned to Kay, who was again seated beside him. “Our friend Ulfius once served King Uther. Don’t listen to him now when he’s sounding like a mercenary. He used to be as honorable as the rest of us once upon a time.”
“I’m still honorable,” Ulfius objected mildly. “There’s no lack of honor in fighting for my supper. In fact, one might say there’s more. The more I fight, the greater my legend grows, and the greater the honors that are bestowed upon me.”
Kay asked, “So being a knight for hire is a lucrative thing?”
Ulfius winked at him. “More lucrative than being a landlord, that’s for certain. More straightforward, too.”
“And what is not straightforward about being a lord?” Sir Ector asked. “My tenants know me, and I know them. They know what is expected of them, and what I have promised, and the taxes are collected every year at the same time without fail.”
Bedivere raised an eyebrow. “Taxes are collected? For whom? There’s no High King or capital to send it to.”
“Never you mind,” Ector teased.
“Ah! I begin to see the wisdom that you were hinting at,” Ulfius laughed. “Young man, let me amend my words. There may be riches to be had in landlording, but not excitement.”
“I don’t know,” Bedivere said drily. “I suppose it can be very exciting to judge the biggest calf of the year at the annual harvest festival.”
Brastias looked at him. “Are you still doing those festivals in Viroconium?”
“The people love them.” He shrugged.
Sir Ector held up his empty tankard, and Arthur came forward to fill it. “Sir Ulfius,” his foster father said, “do you remember my ward?”
Ulfius squinted one eye, as if that helped him to think. “I remember that you had a ward, but I do not recall the name. Was it a boy or a girl?”
“This is my ward,” Ector said, his hand on the youth’s shoulder. “This is Arthur.”
“Well met, young Arthur,” Ulfius said. “My apologies for taking you for a servant instead of as a page.”
“Well met, Sir Ulfius,” he responded quietly. “And no apology is necessary. I am serving, after all.”
The blond knight studied him. “It is a pretty child, Ector. Perhaps tonight…?”
Arthur’s face blazed in embarrassment and anger, and his foster father came to his defense. “No. Absolutely not.”
“Ah, well,” Ulfius said, shrugging. “Can’t hurt to ask.”
“That sort of asking is not welcome here in this keep. My sons are not catamites.” Ector’s voice was calm, but his eyes were stony.
The Norse-blooded knight was either too brave or too unobservant to take note of his host’s ire. He saluted him with his mug and said, “Pity. It would be nice to enjoy him while he’s still young enough.”
Arthur looked at Ector, whose good hand had left his shoulder and moved down toward the dagger at his belt instead. The old knight’s eyes were leveled at Ulfius’s jovial face.
Bedivere saw the danger in their host’s eyes, and he said, “I would speak no more of this if I were you.”
“I’m sorry, Ector. I mean to harm in it. I was only jesting.”
His host scowled. “Were you?”
“Well… not completely. He is a pretty boy, and I do enjoy a smooth young ass from time to time, but I would never so insult you in your home. Honestly.” He smiled ingratiatingly. “Forgive me, please. I am a rough man, and I have always been a rough man. That comes with rough humor, too.”
“So it seems.” Ector left his dagger where it lay and told Arthur, “Go upstairs.”
He put his pitcher down and turned to leave, feeling the weight of the new knight’s eyes on him all the way.
When the household was sleeping, Bedivere, Brastias, Illtyd and Ulfius went to the crypt. Beside the stone coffin of Ector’s wife Aelwen, a new wooden box lay, hammered shut and draped in flowers from the funeral. Amren’s corpse lay inside, and Bedivere pried loose the lid so he could look upon his boy’s death-mottled face.
Ulfius held up a torch and looked, as well. “Pity,” he said. “He was well shaped. He might have been a fine warrior one day.”
Lucan brought a cart filled with kindling and firewood, and he helped them to load the coffin and the body inside of it. Brastias steadied Bedivere with a hand while the knightly companions accompanied the cart down the bumpy road to a pasture not far outside the walls of Caer Gai.
They burned him there, silently watching as Bedivere prayed to the old gods to accept his son into the cycle of rebirth, and especially to Arawn to allow Amren to journey into the land of Annwn to await his next life. The fire burned bright and hot, fed by Lucan with constant care. It would burn all night.
Bedivere stayed with the pyre until the sun’s rays began to peek over the eastern horizon. His friends remained at his side. Halfway through the night, awakened by the smell of burning, Ector joined their vigil, keeping his silence. He brought a brass casket from his keep, emptied of the textile treasures it had held, now dedicated to a treasure much dearer.
Dawn brought the boys, who came to the fire with wide and frightened eyes. Arthur looked stricken when he realized what was happening, and Ector gathered him under his arm and held him tight. Hours passed, and no one said a word.
The church bells pealed for matins, but none of them responded, leaving
Father Marcus to say his Mass alone. Arthur stared into the flames until his eyes were red, both from the smoke and from his own tears, and Bedivere stared at him. Even Ulfius stayed quiet.
When only ashes remained, they were swept onto a silken cloth and bundled together. Bedivere began to put them into the brass casket, but after a moment, he stopped and put the bundle into Arthur’s hands. The boy looked up into Bedivere’s eyes, and his lover’s father nodded to him. It was recognition and acknowledgment he had never expected to receive.
Arthur gently placed his lover’s ashes in the brass box. He stroked the silken bundle, then stepped back with a strangled sob. Bedivere took him into his arms and embraced him as tears of his own spilled down his face. Brastias placed the lid and the casket was returned to the cart. Silent, the little funeral party returned to Caer Gai, and the casket was laid to rest in a niche in the tomb, there to keep Aelwen company once more.
Arthur stood between the mortal remains of his lover and his foster mother, and he wept, utterly bereft. They left him to mourn in private.
That night, with Kay snoring on his pallet and his own bed cold and lonely, Arthur dreamed.
He was in a meadow, walking through tall grass strewn with wildflowers in a riot of color. The sun was warm, and the air smelled like summer. The few clouds in the blue sky above his head were white and puffy, small and very far away. There was no threat of storm or rain.
He was walking toward a copse of trees, beneath which an area of the grass had been shorn short by black-fleeced sheep with curling horns who grazed in quiet peace. In the shadow of the forest, a beautiful lady rested on a blanket of finest wool. As he approached, he saw that the blanket was fringed with hair of many colors, some fair, some dark, some straight and some curly. She was holding something in her hands.
“My lady,” his dream self greeted. “Good morrow.”
She looked up, and he stopped short, his heart pounding. Her face was a skull, grinning, with holes where her eyes should have been. Her long black hair was tangled over her shoulders, and she held up the bundle in her hands.
“My acorns need harvesting,” she told him. “Will you be my reaper?”
From nowhere, the sky turned dark and lightning began to rip the air. Slashing rain poured down upon them both. She rose, taller than the tallest man, and showed him that she was holding a helmet, and the warrior’s head was still inside.
“Reap for me, Arthur.”
He woke with a cry, kicking his blanket away and flinging himself from his pallet. A roll of thunder outside the keep rattled in his ears, and for a moment, he was uncertain if the dream had ended or had merely changed to something else.
Kay left his bed and came to him, startled and afraid. “Arthur, what is it?”
Arthur leaned against the wall, his legs trembling. Another peal of thunder, like the rolling of a half-filled barrel down a cobbled street, filled the air above their heads. “A dream,” he said, more to convince himself than anything else. “A dream.”
His foster brother frowned, then said, “Come rest beside me. The storm won’t seem so horrible if you’re not alone.”
He didn’t know what had made Kay suddenly so charitable, but he would not turn away his kindness when his world was so dark. He nodded silently and went to lie on Kay’s pallet with him. His brother covered them both with the same blanket and patted his arm.
“Sleep now. I’ll keep you safe and sound.”
Arthur leaned his forehead against his brother’s back, and soon Kay’s snoring was a comforting rumble that combatted the thunder in his ears. He closed his eyes and tried to push away the images from his dream that still lingered in his mind, and by the time the worst of the storm had passed, he was asleep again.
A soft voice spoke in the room, but neither boy was awake enough to hear it.
“Reap for me...”
King Pellinore rose from his bed beneath the clamor of thunder, clear-eyed at last. Beside him lay one of the queen’s women - he thought her name might have been Glain - who slept curled up with a tear-stained face, her back toward him. He ran a hand over his head and down his face, and his fingers tangled in his beard, which needed combing.
He found his robe and pulled it on over his nakedness, noting that his body was full of bruises and his neck was sore as if he’d been in some wild brawl. He found a comb and neatened his appearance as well as he could, staring at his reflection in the polished brass mirror on the wall. His eyes looked stark, even to him, and he wondered what madness had overtaken him.
When he left his room, he found Sir Gamerion sitting on a bench in the hallway, dozing with a sword across his knees. As soon as the door opened, his knight commander jerked to wakefulness, leaping to his feet in readiness before his brain had fully shaken off its slumber.
“My lord,” Sir Gamerion said cautiously.
“Sir Gamerion,” Pellinore greeted in a calm and quiet voice. The knight was filled with such relief that the king could read it not just in the expression on his face but in his entire body. “What has befallen me?”
“The Morholt delivered a spell from Queen Yseult in the heat of battle. You were taken with madness. We thought we might have lost you.”
The king looked around. “And these wounds...I suspect I needed to be restrained. By whom?”
Gamerion raised his chin manfully and straightened his back. “It was I who restrained you, Your Majesty.”
Pellinore looked him in the eye, his face severe. “You laid hands upon my royal person? You are responsible for these bruises and hurts?”
His knight commander did not waiver, and he did not look away. “Yes, Your Majesty.”
They stared at each other for a long moment, Gamerion waiting to be punished for treason, Pellinore considering doing just that. Instead, he finally smiled. “Then you are the truest friend I could ever have, and I thank you for doing what was needed.”
The knight commander’s face again betrayed his relief. “Thank you, sir.”
Pellinore began to walk, and Gamerion fell into step beside him. “Tell me… how many did we lose?”
“Not as many as I would have expected, given the size of the invading force. Two hundred men-at-arms, one knight, and four archers have been laid into their graves.”
He nodded. “They were not invading. Their whole purpose was for that bastard to get close enough to curse me with whatever his bitch of a sister sent.”
“So it seems.”
“Irish magic is no match for Norgalis willpower, for I seem to have shaken off the effects,” Pellinore said. “They have failed.”
“Thanks to the gods for your strength, Your Majesty.” The thunder clapped overhead, and Gamerion glanced upward. “Taranis himself rejoices in your recovery.”
They began to descend the tower toward the great hall. A flash of lightning seared the sky, and Pellinore stopped to look out through an arrow slit in the tower wall. Something moved on the castle green. He stopped and looked more closely, waiting for another bolt to illuminate the field. When it came, he clearly saw a beast looking back at him. It was an unholy amalgamation of different creatures, a chimera of the worst kind, seemingly constructed out of the spare parts of a raptor, a reptile and a giant cat. It crouched and stared up at him, its wide and toothy maw dripping saliva onto the grass. Its large eyes were pinned upon him, as if it could see him in the tower, and its clawed feet dug into the ground. It belled like a stag, and Pellinore could feel the sound in his bones. He stepped back.
Sir Gamerion asked, anxious, “What is it, my lord?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. A trick of shadow. I thought I saw...I thought I saw someone standing out on the green.”
The knight commander looked out the arrow slit and when the lightning struck again, he shook his head. “No, my lord. There is nothing there.”
A chilling certainty that he had not cast off the curse settled into Pellinore’s mind, and he lied, “As I said, it was only shadows.”
&nbs
p; He continued down the tower stairs, but deep within him, his soul vibrated with the need to pursue the creature. His hand itched for his sword, and it was all he could do to stay calm and measured as he walked. The need to kill the beast and to have the monster’s blood upon his hands made his heart pound. When he reached the ground floor and left the tower, he took a deep breath and tried to slow its throbbing.
He turned to Sir Gamerion, who was watching him closely. “Send for Merlin. I need to consult with the druid as soon as possible.”
His companion bowed and hurried away to do his bidding, but not before Pellinore could see the doubt in his trusted knight commander’s eyes. He hated to see it, and he hated even more that there were good reasons for that doubt to exist.
He made his way to the queen’s tower. The guards at the stairs snapped to attention as soon as he approached, and he spared them barely a look. It had been weeks, perhaps months, since he had climbed these stairs. The stench of his wife’s perfumes and tinctures filled the narrow space, reminding him why he visited so seldom.
The door to the chamber at the top of the tower was closed, but by his order, it was never locked. There were no doors that were permitted to stay closed to him. He pushed the portal open and strode inside the room.
The only light came from the fire on the hearth, which burned orange. Sybile lay on her bed, her beautiful face composed and deceptively innocent like an angel’s, her long dark curls spread out over her pillow. Beside her, little Aglovale slept, his tiny fists clenched at his sides. He was a handsome and strongly-built child, and Pellinore felt a rush of pride in his first legitimate heir. A cauldron bubbled on the hearth, and the smells it emitted were noisome and offensive. He wrinkled his nose in disgust and approached the bed.
One of her ladies was sleeping on a cot nearby, and she woke suddenly. “My lord!” she said, dropping from her cot to her knees. She was clad in a shift, but still she covered her pendulous breasts with her hands.
He might have been tempted by her at a different time, but tonight he had business with his wife. “Take the child and leave.”
