Here Lies Arthur

by Philip Reeve

  I’ve regretted it since. The gold on that sword would have kept me for a year. But there in the dusk with the mist rising round me, I felt the tug of a story. Arthur was right, for once. Things needed finishing.

  I went slither-scrambling down the steep west slope of the hill, scattering the carrion birds. At the hill’s foot were reeds and alders and the dark swirl of the river. The sun was wedged in the bare branches of the trees on the far bank. I paused and steadied myself and drew back my arm, and I flung Caliburn as far as I could out across the shining water.

  Which wasn’t very far. A sword is a heavy thing. It fell a few feet from the bank. Hit the water with a flat splat like the sound a collop of dung makes dropping from a cow’s arse. Went under with barely a ripple, and the river rolled over it.

  Back up the hill I went, cursing its steepness, grabbing at tussocks of stiff grass for handholds. Arthur was watching me as I picked my way through the corpse-field to him. Not moving any more, but still not dead.

  “Did you see her?” he asked, when I sat down beside him.

  I could have told him a lie, but I was sick of them. So I shook my head, and said, “I saw nothing. Just the wind on the water.”

  People will tell you Arthur isn’t dead. They’ll tell you how he was borne away to lie in enchanted sleep under a hill, or on the Isle of Glass. But don’t you believe them. I heard his last breath rattle up his throat. I watched his thick fingers dig into the soil as if he was clinging on to the world with all his might. And when he’d finished dying it was me who helped myself to his rings and his belt and his boots and the old gold cross he wore round his neck. I thought I’d earned them.

  L

  I left that place, and I rode hard, and I came to Din Branoc under a bleached-skull moon. A door banged in the wind. I walked Dewi up the muddy track, expecting to find more dead men. But I found no men at all. In the hall the women waited, cautious, wary, the way women wait when their husbands and their sons have gone to war. Medrawt had come through the day before, and made the men of fighting age join his war-band. By now they were either dead in the mud of Camlann-ford or in Aquae Sulis, taking for themselves the things that had been Arthur’s.

  “What, even Peredur?”

  Not Peredur. When he heard word that Medrawt’s crowd were coming the headman told Peredur to run and hide in the deep woods, for fear they’d know him as Arthur’s man and do him harm. But Peredur had been too weak to run, and so the headman’s wife had hidden him instead at her own fireside, among the women. Thin as he was from his long fever, pale and big-eyed, he made a pretty girl.

  He wouldn’t meet my eye when they took me to him. He hung his head, face down-cast, like a shy young maiden. He felt ashamed. He thought I’d laugh at him. But if I laughed, it was the laughter of relief, at finding him alive still. And when the women let us be I went to him, and hugged him, and whispered him my secret.

  It felt good to tell it. People had sometimes found me out – Maelwas, and Gwenhwyfar – but I’d never told anyone before, “Gwyn and Gwyna, we’re one and the same.”

  How he stared, when he began to understand me. I thought his understanding would carry him further and he’d work out it had been me beside the river, giving him that cup. But he never thought to. In his memory, the lake-lady was beautiful, and I was hardly that, with my flat round face like a barley bannock, and dressed up as a boy. I had to explain that, too.

  “But I saw her,” he said, struggling to make my face fit his remembering.

  “You saw me. You were fevery. Half in a dream…”

  “She kissed me.”

  “Yes,” I said. I suppose I should have been shy about it. Maidenly. But I didn’t feel maidenly. I felt like I’d ridden a long way, through battles and bad country, and he was my girl, waiting for me at journey’s end. “Yes,” I said, “she did.” And I kissed him again. And we held each other, and it seemed to me he was pleased to find his old friend Gwyn was Gwyna after all.

  “And if there’s no lake-lady,” he said, “is there really no magic? Is there nothing but tricks?”

  “All tricks and stories, angel,” I told him. “But that story’s over now. It’s time to start another.”

  Time to go, before winter tightened its grip so hard we could not go at all. We kept off the roads. Stuck to the woods and the quiet places. Just a young harper and his travelling-companion heading west, taking turns to ride our single pony. Soon we were across Tamar, out of the lands where Arthur had been known, and riding into country where he was just a story.

  I paid our way with that story. It bought us food and warm beds and shelter from the winter’s snow. All down the long tongue of Kernyw, where Britain narrows south and west into the grey ocean, in high halls and cow-warm herdsman’s huts I told my tales of Arthur. For was I not Gwyn, son of Myrddin? And didn’t I alone know the truth of it? And couldn’t my beautiful young friend coax such songs from that cracked old harp that my words took flight upon the music, and wheeled about like swifts under the roof-beams?

  I didn’t tell what really happened, of course. At first I felt ashamed to be telling lies for a living, and it stung me that I could not tell the truth. But as the year ripened and our road wound west I came to see it didn’t matter any longer what the truth had been. The real Arthur had been just a little tyrant in an age of tyrants. What mattered about him was the stories.

  So I told stories of the high deeds of Arthur, and that last great battle where he and the traitor Medrawt fell. I put Cei in that fight, too, at Arthur’s side. And I told how Arthur, as he lay dying, commanded Bedwyr, the last and bravest of his men, to take his sword Caliburn and throw it into a pool of still, clear water. But when he reached the water’s edge Bedwyr could not bring himself to cast the sword away, so he hid it there among the reeds and went back to Arthur. And Arthur asked him, “What did you see?” And Bedwyr said, “I saw nothing but the wind on the water.”

  And then Arthur knew that he was lying, and he lifted himself up in that last red of the dying day and said, “Do as I ask, Bedwyr.”

  So back went Bedwyr to the water’s side, and he took Caliburn and threw it out far, far across the mere. And a white hand, jewelled with water-drops, reached up out of its own reflection and caught the sword, and held it for a moment, and then drew it down beneath the waters.

  And always at the end someone would ask, “Is it true he’s not dead? Not really dead? Will Arthur return?” And I’d think, “Christ, I hope not!”

  But they weren’t thinking of the Arthur I’d known. It was Myrddin’s Arthur they wanted back, the story-Arthur, the wisest and fairest and best king they had ever heard of. You can’t blame people for wanting to believe there’d been a man like that once, and might be again.

  So I’d say, “A ship came for Arthur as he lay on the field of Camlann. Away downriver it took him, to the sea. And on an island in the west he lies sleeping, healed of all his wounds. And he’ll wake one day, when our need of him is bad enough, and he’ll come back to us.”

  Then, if the hall was rich, and the listeners friendly, I’d unwrap the things I carried in my pack and say, “Here. This ring was Arthur’s. This cross was the one he wore through all his battles.” And I got enough in exchange for those relics that by the time we found our way to Din Tagyll in the springtime, my Peri and I, we had enough to buy passage with a trader, outbound for somewhere better.

  LI

  So I’ll end my story the way stories of Arthur always end. A little ship is setting out on the evening tide. Further and further from the land she goes, out beyond the breaking surf, out away from the cliff’s lee and the chough’s cry and the deepening shadows of the land, out to where the sun lies silver on the western sea. And the ship gets smaller and smaller as she goes away, until at last the faint square of her sail fades altogether into the mist of light where the waters meet the sky.

  And the name of that ship, the name of that ship is called, Hope.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

&nb
sp; Here Lies Arthur is not a historical novel, and in writing it I did not set out to portray “the real King Arthur”, only to add my own little thimbleful to the sea of stories which surrounds him.

  Very little historical evidence survives from fifth and sixth century Britain. The last Roman legions left around AD 410, but we don’t know how long a Roman-style government went on operating after that, or who took power as it collapsed. There are references to states like Dumnonia and Calchvynydd, but we can’t be sure where their borders lay, or who their rulers were. Nor do we know whether there was a major war between the Saxons and the native British, or whether Saxon settlement was a more gradual and peaceful process.

  As for Arthur, we know only that he is mentioned as a war-leader in records compiled some centuries later. He is associated with a British victory at the battle of Mount Badon, which some traditions place near Bath (though dozens of alternative sites have been suggested). Some historians have seen him as a Romano-British general fighting against the Saxons, some as a sort of emperor of Britain, and some claim he lived much earlier. Many would argue that he never existed at all.

  The names of Bedwyr and Cei are associated with Arthur from some of the earliest stories. Bedwyr is remembered as Sir Bedivere, but his strength and heroism seem to be transferred to Lancelot in the later tales. Cei becomes Sir Kay, Arthur’s brother or stepbrother, who is often presented as a rather rude, boorish customer.

  Peredur is the hero of one of the stories in The Mabinogion, a collection of Welsh myths and legends. In later mediaeval romances he becomes Perceval, the most human of Arthur’s knights, and finds the Holy Grail. (And, yes, he really does spend his childhood dressed as a girl in several versions.)

  Myrddin, the prototype for the Merlin of later stories, may actually have existed; there seem to have been two poets of that name in the late sixth century.

  Gwyna, like Saint Porroc, is my own invention.

  Anyone interested in learning more about the historical background and the development of the Arthurian legend will find that there is a vast array of books on the subject. Paul White’s King Arthur – Man or Myth? (available from www.bossineybooks.com) might be a useful starting place, as it’s fair, thorough, well written and only forty pages long! Kevin Crossley-Holland’s Arthur trilogy, published by Orion, is a great modern reworking of the mediaeval Arthurian romances.

  As usual, I’m indebted to my editors at Scholastic, Kirsten Stansfield, Amanda Punter and Katy Moran (who also came up with the title). Tim Wright, whose knowledge of the subject (and most others) is far deeper than my own, was a source of much useful information, as was George Southcombe. Lu and Tizzy Palmes helped me with the horses. Needless to say, any mistakes are my own silly fault.

  My interest in Arthur began on 5 July 1981 at about two o’clock in the afternoon, when I wandered into the ABC cinema in Brighton to watch John Boorman’s film Excalibur (cert. 15). Brilliant, beautiful and barking mad, it’s still my favourite modern retelling of the legends.

  Philip Reeve, Dartmoor

  2006

  NOTE ON PRONUNCIATION

  Due to the very different sound systems of English and Welsh, many of these are approximate rather than exact representations of the Welsh pronunciations. Italics show that the syllable is stressed.

  NAME PRONUNCIATION

  Bannawg ban-owg

  Bedwyr bedwirr

  Cadwy kadwi

  Calchvynydd kalckvanith*

  Cei kay

  Celemon kelemon

  Celliwic kethleewick

  Cunaide koon-eyed

  Dewi deh-wee

  Din Branoc deen brannock

  Din Tagyll deen tagihl

  Greidawl grayd-owl

  Gwenhwyfar gooennhooeevarr

  Gworthigern goo-ortheegern**

  Gwri gooree

  Gwyn gooinn

  Gwyna gooinnah

  Gwynedd gooinneth*

  Kernyw kerrnioo

  Maelwas maeelwahss

  Medrawt meddr-out

  Myrddin marthinn*

  Peredur perredirr

  Powys pohwiss

  Rheged hrehgedd

  Rhiannedd hrreeanneth*

  Tewdric tao-drick

  Trwch Trwyth toorckh troith

  Uthr ithirr**

  Ygerna eegerrna

  Ynys Wydryn un-niss widrinn

  Ysbaddaden uss-badathenn*

  * In these words, “th” is pronounced as it is in the English word “then”

  ** In these words, “th” is pronounced as it is in the English word “thin”

  With thanks to Dr Mari Jones of the University of Cambridge

  Copyright

  Scholastic Children’s Books

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  SCHOLASTIC and associated logos are trademarks and/or registered trademarks of Scholastic Inc.

  First published in 2007 by Scholastic Children’s Books

  This electronic edition published in 2011 by Scholastic Ltd

  Text copyright © Philip Reeve, 2007

  The right of Philip Reeve to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him.

  Cover image copyright © David Wyatt, 2009

  eISBN: 978 1 407 12918 1

  A CIP catalogue record for this work is available from the British Library.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, incidents and dialogues are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual people, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

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