Wonders Will Never Cease

by Robert Irwin

  At this point Anthony steps in front of Malory and punches him hard in the stomach and Malory falls gasping to the ground.

  ‘I refute you thus,’ shouts Anthony.

  ‘You should not have done that,’ wheezes Malory.

  The bodyguards come running up, but Anthony waves them away.

  ‘Think yourself lucky that I did not aim for your throat. You would have had me killed when we were at the northern sieges. But now you have felt me, have you not? And you can hear me, can you not?’ Anthony is still shouting. ‘And now you shall have a taste of me.’Anthony makes ready as if to piss on the fallen man.

  ‘I cry you mercy,’ gasps Malory. ‘I only meant to warn you of a certain danger and I see that I have gone about it in the wrong way.’ With this he hastily struggles to his feet.

  ‘Why should I believe in anything you say? For I now know your history, and now that I know it, I do not believe that you are human, for you are really some kind of demon.’

  ‘I am a man as you are.’ Malory’s voice is a whisper.

  ‘No, I say that you are some kind of demon. I swear that I cannot think of any kind of violence, villainy or blasphemy that you have not committed: poaching, ambush, robbery with violence, adultery, extortion, theft, rape, rustling, desecration and theft from an abbey and, it is whispered, treason. And yet you have spent so much time in so many prisons that it is hard to imagine how you have found time to commit so many crimes.’

  Malory shrugs.

  ‘These things can be explained, even if not excused. But as I say, I wanted to warn you, for you are in danger.’

  Now Anthony takes Malory by the arm.

  ‘You know something of the redheaded man… Do you know who he is?’

  Malory replies, ‘I swear I do not know you to be in peril from any man. You are strong, rich, and connected to the King. The peril comes from elsewhere.’

  ‘What then?’

  Malory is now busy brushing mud off his jerkin.

  ‘The danger comes from stories. They crowd around you like little devils. It is not a comfortable thing to be a creature in someone else’s fictions. In some stories you appear to be sinister. You scourge yourself until your back is a mess of bloody welts. You seek to kill a former comrade in arms. You rob the dead of their treasure. In other stories you appear as a comical figure, as in your resistance to the seductive wiles of Dame Discipline de la Chevalerie. Your life and soul are being stolen from you as you become tangled in a web of falsehoods and you are clothed in other men’s deeds. Who is doing this to you? Is it your mother? People say that she is steeped in faery lore. Am I right? Is it Jacquetta de St Pol?’

  Finally, ‘Some of the stories are true,’ says Anthony.

  Malory is not impressed, ‘They may start as true but still end up as falsehoods and the falsehoods will possess you and you will become a wraith, the subject and victim of dark fantasy. I know about the story-devils. So I can tell you that some of the stories that are now told about you belong to other men who are long dead. The theft of their stories is a kind of grave robbery and must be punished. The story-devils will come for you and plague you. They will crawl all over you like lice. Do you really wear a hair shirt, by the way?’

  Anthony shakes his head.

  ‘I thought not. The story-devils are serfs of the Devil. The mad things will keep you awake at night as they whisper in the corners of your bedchamber. In the corners of your bedchamber they will mate and multiply. As they fight for your attention, story will kill story. In their struggles, some stories will be mutilated and lose vital parts. Some are headless and grope their way around. Others flap their wings, though they are too weak to fly and their wings are only a burden to them. Yet these misshapen stories will still come limping or crawling towards you, begging you to listen to them, and they will tempt you with mad messages, seductive promises and narratives of past horrors.’

  Nothing more is said until they reach their destination, but Anthony is thinking that it is Malory who is the man for mad messages. At the Bull and Mouth in St. Martin’s-Le-Grand Malory demands and gets a room where they can be alone and he has a fire lit, so that they can dry off. Amyas and Hugh have drinks brought to them in the public parlour. Once Malory has a jug of Gascon wine in front of him he looks at Anthony and asks, ‘What do you know of the matter of the Dolorous Stroke?’

  ‘I do not know what a dolorous stroke is. How should I know?’ And then Anthony hesitates. ‘But now I think about it, it is said that when I met and conversed with the draug of Guildford, the creature promised to tell me about the Dolorous Stroke, though he did not keep to his word.’

  ‘It is as I thought,’ said Malory. ‘It is said that when you met… Well, one more story then. Now I will tell you the story of The Dolorous Stroke.’

  This is the story.

  Early in the reign of Arthur he fought a great battle against King Lot of Orkney in which he was victorious and Lot and twelve Kings who fought for Lot were slain. This was in the days before the coming of Gawain, Lancelot and Galahad, the doughtiest knights who fought for Arthur in that battle were Balin, who was also known as The Knight with Two Swords, and his brother Balan. Men thought that they must have been sent from heaven as angels, or devils from Hell. But when the time came to inter the twelve Kings and Arthur asked after Balin, Merlin prophesied that it would be Balin who would deliver the Dolorous Stroke and a terrible retribution would follow. I do not think that wizard ever found anything good to foretell.

  A little later Arthur fell ill and spent some days on his sickbed. While he lay there he was visited by an unknown knight who wept at his bedside, but when Arthur asked what the matter was, the knight replied that it was beyond the King’s power to amend, and so saying, he departed towards the Castle of Meliot. Then when Balin appeared before Arthur, the King ordered him to find the grieving knight and use force if necessary to bring him back before him.

  So Balin galloped off and in a little while caught up with the weeping knight who was riding in the company of a damsel. Balin demanded that the knight should return with him to the King. The knight was reluctant to do so, for he knew that he was in great peril, but Balin told him that if he did not return willingly then they would have to fight. The knight was still reluctant and sought Balin’s guarantee that he would protect him. Whereupon Balin swore that he would protect him at the cost of his own life if necessary. So Balin, the knight and the damsel rode back, but when they were close to Arthur’s pavilion an invisible knight attacked the man whom Balin had sworn to defend and struck him a deadly blow.

  ‘Alas,’ said the knight, ‘though I was under your sworn protection, Sir Garlon has slain me. So now you must follow the damsel where she will lead you and avenge my death.’

  ‘I shall do so,’ replied Balin.

  And he followed the damsel into the forest where they met a knight who had been hunting and the knight asked them what they did and when Balin told him, the knight said that he would join them. Then once the knight had fetched his armour from a hostelry and armed himself, they rode on, until they came to a churchyard by a hermitage and it was there that the invisible Sir Garlon struck at the knight who was Balin’s companion and struck him a lethal blow.

  ‘Alas!’ cried the knight, ‘I am slain by the traitor knight who rides invisible.’

  After they had buried the knight, Balin and the damsel rode away and they travelled for four days without encountering any adventures or hearing anything of the invisible knight. But on the evening of the fourth day they found lodgings with a wealthy man who told them that in less than three weeks’ time King Pellam of Listeneise would hold a tournament and that Sir Garlon was certain to make his appearance there.

  It took Balin and the damsel a little over two weeks to reach the castle of Listeneise. Balin was well received and provided with a comfortable room. The servants of the castle took off his armour and provided him with rich robes, though when they made to take away his sword, he refused for he said
that it was not the custom of his country to be parted from one’s sword.

  After this he went down to dinner where he found himself honourably seated. Then he asked after Sir Garlon.

  His neighbour replied, ‘He is over there, the man with the black face. He is a great knight who goes about invisibly and kills other knights.’

  At this, Sir Garlon, perceiving that he was being talked about walked over and struck Balin in the face with the back of his hand, saying, ‘Why were you looking at me in that fashion? For shame! Eat your meat and behave as our guest should.’

  Whereupon Balin rose from his place and drawing his sword, brought it down on Garlon’s head and sliced almost right through. Then King Pellam arose and wrathfully shouted, ‘You knight, because you have slain my brother, you shall not leave this castle alive.’

  A servant handed Pellam an axe, and rushing upon Balin, he aimed to strike at Balin’s head. Balin raised his sword to defend his head, but the sword shattered under the axe blow. Since he was now without a weapon, he turned and fled through room after room looking for something with which he might defend himself. At last he came to a richly decorated chamber at the centre of which was a table of silver and gold on which there was a strange-looking spear. Balin seized the spear and with it he struck at the pursuing Pellam’s groin. As Pellam fell to ground unconscious, the walls of the castle shook and began to fall apart. Balin lay unconscious in the rubble for three days before recovering and finding his way out of the ruins. The damsel was dead and so were most of King Pellam’s court, though King Pellam lived on for many long years despite his horrid wound. He had been a vigorous man who had loved fishing and hunting, but that was all finished with now and he lay on his sickbed and waited for succour.

  Merlin found Balin unconscious amongst the rubble and provided him with a horse, for his own horse was dead in the ruins. The damsel was also dead. Merlin told Balin that the spear that he had used against Pellam was the same spear which the centurion Longius used to pierce the breast of our Lord Jesus Christ. Pellam, who had been Balin’s host, was the noblest of all living Kings and because of his wound, which would not heal, a curse had fallen on the land, for when a King is sick, his Kingdom must follow him in his sickness.

  Balin said to Merlin, ‘In this world we shall never meet again’ and he rode away. Wherever he rode he found people dying or slain. Farms were abandoned for lack of farmhands, and cattle and sheep strayed or starved. At first fruit rotted on the ground and then their trees withered and could bear no more fruit. Fertile land became barren and dead fishes choked the rivers. Hungry dogs attacked famished people. Men fought with men to gain only a little food and that fighting continues to this day. The war between York and Lancaster is only the most recent of battles that have followed on from the maiming of Pellam and the ruin of his castle and we today live in the wasteland that Balin’s stroke brought about. This is the winter of history.

  People cried out against Balin for having brought ruin on the land with his Dolorous Stroke and some foretold that Balin would fall victim to divine vengeance and indeed only a few months passed before he was slain by his own brother. But that is another story.’

  Now Malory looks to Anthony.

  ‘I do not like this story,’ says Anthony. ‘I would rather have heard about the bratchet. The story you have just told makes no sense to me, for I think that the invisible knight, Garlon was a murderer and one moreover who used sorcery to kill his victims and therefore it was Balin’s duty to slay him and Pellam was a villain to harbour Garlon, even if he was his own brother, and Pellam was wrong to seek to revenge himself on Balin, and Balin was right to defend himself in any way he could. Pellam was surely not “the noblest of all living Kings”. Why then should God punish Balin, and even worse, bring devastation to the land and its innocent people?’

  Malory’s smile is bitter.

  ‘I thought that you would not understand it. This story is a test for the listener and that is why I told it to you. Pellam was an anointed King. A man who strikes at a King strikes at God himself and God’s ways are inscrutable. To question what has been divinely ordained is a horrid blasphemy. No matter what wrongs a King may commit, he is always right and for a subject to raise his hand against his rightful ruler must always be wrong. The health and fortunes of a monarch’s subjects depend on his health and fortune.’

  Of course Malory is no longer speaking of Pellam, but of Henry of Lancaster.

  Then Malory closes his eyes and recites, as if reading from a book, ‘ “Alas,” said Sir Lancelot, “that ever I should live to hear that most noble King that made me knight thus to be overset with his subjects in his own realm”.’

  But Anthony says, ‘You are a hypocrite, for you have admitted that you are a criminal many times over and yet I hear you compare yourself to Sir Lancelot! You are certainly a hypocrite, for on the way here, I heard you denounce stories as spiteful and seductive devils and yet just now you have told me another story.’

  Again Malory closes his eyes and this time he recites, ‘ “Odi et amo: quare id faciam, fortasse requiris, Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.” I hate and I love. You may ask why I do so. I do not know, but I feel it and am in torment.’ And, opening his eyes, Malory continues, ‘No man is simple and made from one element alone. Catullus tells us that. I would do good. There is good in me. I first discovered this when I was locked up in Ludgate Prison for poaching and at the mercy of the sheriffs of London. I was in despair, for I was already familiar with the horrors of confinement and yet not hardened to them.’

  ‘Now I will tell you how God sent me deliverance. I prayed, and as I prayed, God sent me an answer to my prayer and He showed me not only how I could walk out of this dark cell, though all the doors and gates of the prison were locked, but also how I could leave my sinful self behind. Straightaway I closed my eyes and conjured up in my imagination a golden light and lit up by that golden light, a better land in which I travelled in the company of just Kings, brave knights, wise hermits, and I met women who were as virtuous as they were beautiful. It was strange, for these good people were everything that I am not and yet I had them all within me. It as if they were the seeds of the offspring I had yet to father.

  These Kings, knights and damsels were all familiar to me from stories I had heard when I was young, but many of the stories were broken and misshapen and it came to me that I should bring them peacefully together and that I should become a healer of stories and I should write down what I had brought about and I have prayed to Jesus that He might help me with his great might by day and by night, for I have dedicated myself to the composition of a noble and joyous book entitled Le Morte d’Arthur which will treat of the birth, life and acts of King Arthur, of his noble knights of the Round Table, their marvellous quests and adventures, the finding of the Holy Grail, and, in the end, the dolorous death and departing out of this world of them all. It may be that in what is to come I may find myself in prison once more and yet I can never again be confined within a gaol’s walls, since I walk out at will and find myself in Camelot, Sarras, Lyonesse or Broceliande.’

  Now Anthony asks once more for the story of the bratchet, the hind and the screeching lady, but Malory replies that on this day he has not the heart for it.

  Whereupon Anthony rises from the table and says, ‘In that case, I bid you good day. I doubt if we shall meet again.’

  But Malory replies, ‘I have heard that next year you are to joust at Smithfield against the Great Bastard of Burgundy. In the Kingdom of Logres there used to be a great tourney held somewhere or other every two or three weeks, but it is now a long time since we have seen jousting in England. I promise that I shall be at Smithfield to see how you acquit yourself, for I need to remind myself how such encounters are conducted so that I may write a good account of them. You may find yourself turned into one of my paladins.’

  Anthony shrugs and walks out. As they make their way back to the Woodville townhouse, Amyas wants to know what Malory�
�s business was.

  But all Anthony says is, ‘He is a madman and a hypocrite, or, if he is not, then I am.’

  And Anthony thinks that if Malory is to be confined once more, it should not be as a rapist, a poacher or a traitor, but as a lunatic. But then he asks himself is he really Malory’s brother murderer. Then he thinks about Sir Garlon in the story of the Dolorous Stroke, the invisible knight who went about murdering knights and abducting women. It is only in stories that villains rub their hands and cackle with glee. It is only in stories that villains think of themselves as villains.

  Chapter Ten: Joust

  On the Sunday before his first encounter with the Bastard, Anthony accompanies his family to matins at their customary church of St Mary at Axe.

  Though he hopes to find comfort and encouragement before the ordeal that is to come, in this he is disappointed. The officiating priest, the Reverend William Crosier, anticipating that the Woodvilles would attend the Sunday service as usual, has prepared a special sermon just for Anthony.