The Story of Silence

by Alex Myers

  In short order, Earl Cador welcomed them all. ‘Let this be a night of celebration. Let this be a mark of how the seasons turn, how fortune turns as well. We are at the height of summer, the time when our land is full of light. But, mark! We know even now that darkness and winter will return. So, as good men, we prepare in these sunny hours for the cold we know awaits us. Though this is a time of peace in Cornwall, and peace in England, I know that fighting will return. Thus we practise at games and contests and jousting. And though today was all in good sport and fun, tomorrow we may be battling in earnest for our lives and our land.’ Cador raised his goblet high. ‘Let us drink to peace!’

  The hall roared its approval and drank.

  ‘And let us prepare this day for the battles to come.’ Cador set his goblet down. ‘Sir Jackin. For your valour on the pitch, for your loyal service to Tintagel and all of Cornwall, I name you Lord of West Wivel.’ He raised the goblet and the hall cheered. ‘But you will have no time to enjoy your holdings, I fear. For Sir Rolf came bearing a message from King Evan. He has asked Cornwall to send the best of its knights and men-at-arms, for King Evan fears that the harvest time will tempt the Danish raiders. And so, you will ride to Winchester, along with Sir Steven, Sir Lewis, and Sir Gregory. And, that Tintagel may not be empty of knights, I now call Squires Tebauld, Magnus, and Mark.’

  From a table below Silence’s, three young men stood up and approached the dais. Earl Cador signalled and the priest came forward, along with a servant carrying Cador’s scabbarded sword. There on the dais, Cador drew his sword and it felt to Silence as if the whole hall had taken a deep breath and now held it. Cador held the sword up, letting it glint in the firelight, then inverted it so that it stood upright, point down on the floor. ‘Place your hand on the hilt,’ he ordered the first squire. Squire Tebauld grasped the pommel. ‘Father?’

  The priest intoned the words of the sacred oath. Silence could not hear all of what the priest said, nor the words that Squire Tebauld said back, but caught only snippets: ‘… Faithful to my lord … do homage and serve … without deceit …’ After sprinkling them with holy water from the ewer, the priest stepped back and Earl Cador raised the sword, tapping Tebauld on one shoulder, passing the blade over his head and tapping his other shoulder. ‘Serve with the honour, the strength, the valour, of St George,’ he said. Tebauld bowed low and took a few steps back, waiting while Squire Magnus went through the same ritual.

  As the third squire was knighted, the hall began to whisper. Earl Cador gestured for the new knights to be seated and then raised a hand to still the murmurings. ‘As you well surmise, these new knights need new squires, and Lord Jackin, too, needs a squire to serve him. Indeed, I will send him to Winchester with two squires and a company of guards as well. We will show King Evan how faithful and stout we men of Cornwall are!’ The hall roared at this and Cador let them yell and pound the tables for some moments before raising his hand for quiet.

  ‘From the ranks of the pages, I call Wendell, Alois, Hans, Henry, and John. Come forward, let the priest bless you as squires.’

  There was shuffling and the squeak of a bench pushed back against the stone floor and then the pages hurried forward, eager as puppies. The priest placed his hands on each one’s head, and Silence could barely stand to watch. It felt as though his stomach (which had been aching all day with misery) had now simply plummeted to his feet. He could almost be happy for Alois, who beamed with joy as he took a place at the squires’ table, but not truly. It wasn’t fair. He was older than Alois and better at riding and just as good, if not a little better, at the sword, too. Why Alois and not him? Because he was Earl Cador’s son.

  The hall rose up, hoisting mugs and offering raucous shouts of praise for the new knights, the new squires, for King Evan and Earl Cador, for Cornwall, for England. For everyone. Except Silence.

  Griselle and Silence withdrew to their chamber long before the revelry was over. Griselle had tucked away a few morsels of pork and now fed them to Mooch, who purred happily, while Silence stared out of the window. No bonfires marked the coastline tonight.

  The old maid noticed the quiet. ‘You are disappointed, my dear,’ Griselle said. ‘But you must trust that your father knows what is best.’

  He couldn’t summon up words to make an answer, and he knew that if he tried to explain himself, only tears would come out. So he merely shook his head and continued to gaze into the dark.

  Silence woke that night to a pitch-dark chamber, an ache low in his belly, and the warm, unpleasant sensation of wetness on the sheets beneath him. He started upright, waking Griselle, who lay curled next to him. ‘What is it?’ she said, pushing herself up to face him.

  ‘I don’t know … I feel … wounded.’

  ‘Wounded? What aches?’

  Silence put a hand to his stomach, heard Griselle groping for the taper, heard the grate of flint, and the spark jumped and the candle flared. Overcome with a reluctance he couldn’t explain, Silence pulled back the bedcovers. There. On the sheets, brown-red stains. ‘I’m bleeding!’ he said.

  ‘Oh, my child,’ whispered Griselle. ‘You are bleeding. It is your time.’

  Silence stared at her. He put a hand to his stomach.

  ‘Does it ache?’

  He nodded. ‘Am I wounded?’

  ‘It is not that sort of bleeding.’ She swung her legs out of the bed and stepped down. ‘At a certain age, a girl ripens to become a woman.’

  ‘You’ve told me this,’ Silence said, a hand pressed to his abdomen. He could be dying and she was blathering about ripeness, as if he were a fruit.

  ‘Yes. And you didn’t listen, or you’d understand. You aren’t wounded. You’ve merely become a woman.’

  ‘Never!’ Silence cried. Recalling it was the middle of the night, he lowered his voice. ‘I will never be a woman.’

  She stood and looked at him, stern and sad. ‘I’m afraid you haven’t any choice. Nature moulded you to be a woman. And once a month, a woman bleeds.’

  ‘Every month?’

  ‘Some women have it come less often, though in that case, it is best to have a surgeon open a vein. When your years of ripeness have ended, your bleeding ceases.’

  He could feel the slightest trickle within, the warm, unpleasant slide of it. He was bleeding. Like a woman. As he pressed his hands to his stomach, tears pricked at the corners of his eyes. They’d been waiting there all evening, ever since Wendell had been called as a squire, and now they flooded out. ‘I don’t want this,’ he said. ‘I know you told me this would happen. But I thought … I thought I could deny …’

  ‘Shush, shush.’ Griselle patted his head and offered him a kerchief. He dabbed his eyes and blew his nose as she crossed the room and opened a trunk. ‘Had your noble father sired a son first, and then had you as his daughter, we would be glad for this day. It is only circumstance, and the king’s law, that makes this cause for concern. I remain hopeful that some day soon, the king will reverse his order and women can again inherit …’ Griselle offered Silence a handful of rags. ‘These will absorb the blood; place them in your braies.’

  Silence stared at the rags, then at Griselle. ‘I put these in my breeches and … bleed?’

  ‘It won’t be gouts of blood. If the flow is heavy, I can make you a remedy …’

  He picked up the rags and went to the wardrobe, where he found his undergarments. ‘Won’t it fall out?’

  Griselle considered this. ‘You are more active than most women. I’ll help you tie the rags into your braies in the morning and show you how to wash them discreetly. You’ll need a sachet of cloves to wear around your neck, so there isn’t any smell.’ She dug in the trunk some more. ‘The odour is most harmful to men, being full of moisture.’

  How he wanted to fling the wad of rags across the room, to slam the trunk closed, to tell Griselle that he wasn’t a woman at all. But his belly ached, as if he had grinding millstones within. He was a woman … despite all the training, all the effort …
‘Will I never be a knight?’ he choked out.

  Griselle stopped her searching and sat next to him on the bed. ‘That is up to you, my dearest. I know you feel as if everything has changed. You are by Nature a woman, true. This is the first of several changes that Nature will make upon you, and there is nothing you can do to stop Nature. But your father ordered you, long ago, to be raised as a boy. And so you have been Nurtured.’

  ‘But my father doesn’t wish for me to be a knight,’ Silence said. ‘I don’t know what he wants, or what I should try to be …’

  She smoothed back his hair, stroking his forehead gently. After a time she spoke in a voice pitched so low, Silence wondered if he was meant to hear. ‘I understand, my dear. Your noble father … Like any man, he thinks he can bend the world to his will. But I think, if you want to be a knight, you shall be a knight. It will be twice as hard for you, I fear. For though you may be able to live as a man, yet you will also always be a woman. It is hard enough to be one or the other, and I fear it harder yet to be both.’ Her last words were nothing more than a whisper. ‘What will you be?’

  Silence.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Tintagel gathered to bid farewell to the knights and squires who would journey to Winchester. Lady Elizabeth stood beside Earl Cador on the battlement over the gatehouse as the company marched away. Silence waited in the yard, standing in the midst of the group of pages. He felt rather like a tree in a field, for he towered above the others, new boys brought up to fill the ranks. He did not look over to where the squires stood, nor did he show any emotion other than happiness when Alois and Wendell rode off behind Lord Jackin. His guts had quit their aching; his courses had ceased their flow. He wore once again the simple tunic of a page and waited only for Master Waldron to bark an order that would set him in motion.

  So passed the summer and the autumn. The harvest had its own festival, somewhat dampened by the news that the Danes had indeed attacked the coast as King Evan feared, setting fire to many towns before they were subdued. Earl Cador himself led a troop of armsmen down to Cornwall’s eastern coast, where they guarded the fields as the crops were brought in.

  Silence toiled at his chores with the other pages, battered the pells, practised his riding. He put on the padded jacket and sparred with the practice sword, longing to wear mail and toughened leather, and the real plate armour of a knight. Enough of practising. Enough of pretending. He wanted to do.

  But all he could do was follow orders. In the moments of free time, Silence would hurry to take Clopper from the stable. The other pages seemed so young to him; he had no patience for their silly games and antics. So he rode, pressing Clopper hard to carry him away from the keep, over the rocky promontories, past the crofts of the sheepherders. Sometimes he would climb down to the shingled beaches and stand at the edge, where the waves frothed and foamed. He might hurl rocks into the water, or simply peer out across the grey expanse hoping to see something – a selkie, a whale, the humped curve of a sea monster. The bases of the cliffs were pocked here and there with caves, and he’d heard Sticks tell the story about one being Merlin’s cave. On a day when he was feeling particularly brave, Silence ventured into one of them; it stank of seaweed and the damp sand sucked at his feet; it was hard to imagine a great wizard wanting to live in one of these hollows. But then, it was hard to imagine magic at all.

  Sometimes … sometimes … Silence thought of the face he’d seen in the spring, back at Ringmar. Had he just invented that? Out of his loneliness, wished someone to speak to him? He trailed his fingers along the wall. Perhaps, when Merlin was here, he cast a spell on the place and the dark slimy rock became glowing crystal; or perhaps it always looked that way to him, and mere humans just couldn’t perceive it properly. Well, Silence was just a child, just a page, and this cave was dark and damp and fish-smelling. If it was Merlin’s cave, then Merlin had long since abandoned it, and Silence couldn’t blame him.

  Autumn turned to winter, with freezing rain and freezing fog and gales that seemed to pierce through even Tintagel’s rock walls. Silence spent more time in the chamber he shared with Griselle, dangling bits of yarn for Mooch to bat at and staring into the speckled mirror for hours at a time. He had changed. He could see it. His hips had rounded and his thighs had grown heavier. The hairs on his legs and arms darkened from gold-blond to bark-brown. His chest had swelled and ached not long after his courses had begun and he had gone to bed often that summer fearing that he would wake up with a massive bosom. To his relief, this hadn’t happened. He had two small mounds on his chest, and Griselle told him that some women – she mentioned Lady Ethel as an example – never grew large breasts. She helped him wind muslin tightly around his chest to press down the new flesh there. Silence rather liked the effect of this; it made him seem to have solid muscle.

  And he was stronger. His legs were bigger, yes, and more powerful. His shoulders hadn’t broadened, true, but swinging a waster at a pell every day had made his back and arms corded with muscle. He could wrap his arms around Griselle and lift her off the floor, even heave her over his shoulder and carry her about. It made him laugh to do this whenever she tried to scold him and, eventually, she would laugh, too, loud enough for Mooch to flatten her ears.

  So when he gazed into the mirror, he wasn’t certain what he saw. This weather-chapped face with eyes of stormy grey. That could be a young knight’s face. But take off the shirt and leggings, and there were the curves of a woman’s body, meant to be sheathed in a dress, desired by men. And hanging off that body: two gangling arms, thick with sinew. If Silence were a woman, she could crush any man with her embrace. But Silence was not a woman. He looked harder. Not a man either. Silence, more and more, felt that he was a child. Perpetually. For as long as he stayed at Tintagel, as long as he stayed beneath his father’s oversight, that is all he would ever be.

  The winter ended with a glorious burst of sun that turned the keep’s yard into mud. When this had dried and spring had fully settled on the land, Cador rode out and took stock of his holdings. The steward explained to Silence that this was part of an earl’s duty (the steward, poor man, didn’t know of Silence’s Nature and so expected the young man to one day be earl). An earl must know what crops were planted, how the flocks fared, how the fishing boats had managed in the winter storms. All of this would reassure the holders that their earl cared for them and would protect them. And it allowed the earl to know how much tax his lords could gather.

  But Cador returned to Tintagel with more than news from the countryside. The evening after he came back he assembled the knights and squires and pages in the hall and told them that he had decided he would marry Lady Elea, daughter of the Baron of Glynn. They drank a toast and would have drunk another, but Cador urged them to quiet. ‘There will be time for celebration, indeed. I intend to host the wedding here at the end of the midsummer’s festival. And so we must ready Tintagel. It has too long been a house of mourning. Though I loved my dear wife Roswyn, it is time for this once again to be a place of joy and love.’ More cheers, more toasts. Silence raised his mug along with the others. Griselle dabbed at her eyes. ‘Oh, how wonderful,’ she said.

  Sticks tottered out to his usual stool and called Silence to him. They sang ‘How Sweet is Marriage’ and ‘My True Love’ and then Sticks took out his harp and plucked a few opening notes. The hall roared as he began to recount the story of Cador and the dragon. The earl flushed at this and waved a hand as if to stop the story, but then laughed and shouted, ‘Carry on!’ and the harp picked up and there was Silence’s father, in the woods of Gwenelleth, receiving aid from Merlin.

  Silence spent a restless night. When he had readied himself for bed, he’d asked Griselle, ‘What if my father’s new wife doesn’t care for me?’ and Griselle, rather full of wine, had waved away his concerns. ‘How could she not? You’re a fine boy.’ But that had not allayed his fear and so he rose early and tiptoed from the chamber, climbing up the stairs to the battlements. The wind hadn’t yet p
icked up, and dawn had barely broken. He could hear the sounds of the keep beginning to stir, smell the smoke of the kitchen’s fires. Then he walked around the walls, so that he could look out at the sea. Why did it offer him such comfort to gaze upon the water? Perhaps because it seemed endless. Constant. Unchanging. And yet, it was always changing. Some days it dazzled blue in the sunshine. Other days it mirrored the grey of the low-hanging clouds. It raged and foamed; it murmured and shushed.

  That was the magic of it, that it could be both gentle and strong. Both dangerous and soothing. This morning, it lulled him and so, when a massive crow landed nearly on his shoulder, he was so startled he yelped.

  ‘Haw!’ the crow said. Only what Silence heard was, Sorry. The wind caught me there. I didn’t mean to startle you.

  Silence made the sign of the cross at the bird, which had hopped down to settle on the ledge beside an arrow slit, sheltered from the wind. The crow cocked its head to one side, then the other. Don’t you know what I am? They were telling my story last night.

  ‘Your story?’ Silence said, then glanced about, aware that if anyone spotted him, he would be deemed mad for certain, conversing with a crow. But the walls were empty at this hour. He lowered his voice nonetheless. ‘They told my father’s story.’

  ‘Haw! Haw!’ Who really saved the day? Your father would have been another set of bones on that dragon’s pile had it not been for me.

  ‘Merlin?’ Silence squinted at the crow. It looked like a normal bird. Big, yes, but nothing out of the ordinary.