Tales of the Once and Future King

by Anthony Marchetta

  But how could the shining Corona be a mere witch’s spell? It had ruled all of Palavel, generation after generation, and now even controlled the knight himself. The knight prayed, murmuring words softly but with great emotion, and as he prayed Mauregal scowled in the darkness and thought. Suddenly he caught his breath as an idea occurred to him.

  He slowly put his hand into his poke and drew out the packet of mugwort he had bought from Ettarona in the morning that seemed so long ago. He stared at it open-mouthed, as if he had never seen a common packet of mugwort before: mugwort, gathered by the ancient herbwife, for all the brewers in Palavel to buy every Saturday morning, then brewed into every potation in the valley for countless years, to be drunk by everyone—even by Kincarius, new to the valley, who was under the spell of the Corona immediately; everyone except Sagredur, who alone was not under the spell of the Corona, not until just now; and now, after drinking—drinking from Ettarona’s hand! —he was.

  “I say,” said Mauregal. Gautius and Ganuan looked up at him, and the knight paused in his prayers and half-turned to look over his shoulder. “I’m sorry to interrupt your prayers, but I think you may be onto something.”

  Within another half hour, they had devised a plan.

  Part 5: The Wedding

  In the afternoon, the town square had been hastily decorated. Garlands of flowers adorned the lintels of doors and the heads of pretty girls. People who owned more than one outfit were in their better ones, and there were very many people crowded together. The children were laughing and playing, and their naïve rejoicings even infected their elders. Several pigs were roasting, and many kegs of ale had been tapped (though not at Guillus’s expense this time), and the prospect of a decent meal lifted people’s spirits. But in the back of their minds, most were soberly weighing the likelihoods of this new king’s reign and not feeling entirely celebratory.

  Someone had gone to the trouble of knocking together a raised stage, about twenty feet square, at one end of the market clearing. Flowers had been strewn on it and twisted up the posts at its corners. It looked none too sturdy, and Argudanus the smith and his carpenter friend Vallidin had hastily improvised a sort of fence to keep people from climbing on it.

  At last came the hour when Guillus appeared, decked in the best clothes in the village: Kincarius’s outfit, hastily and inexpertly taken in. It served well as royal robes since no one here recognized it as a squire’s livery. He walked up and down the crowd smiling and making rather distant expressions of benevolence before mounting the stage and raising a hand to summon his bride.

  Several of the fashionable women of the village had helped make Lunwyn charming in bridal finery. But she was unable to keep back tears as she approached the stage through the midst of all her friends and mounted the steps. Her demeanor dampened the crowd’s spirits further, and when Guillus called for cheering it was subdued.

  The new King was not troubled by moods, however. He was more interested in making his speech.

  “People of Palavel,” he said, “today is the beginning not only of a new king—myself—” He paused, looking back and forth over the crowd, smiling; but if he was expecting any reaction they did not oblige him, so he went on: “—but of a new era in our history!

  “I have studied the kings of old, how the Corona allowed them to keep order and peace within this valley with the three General Orders. And I ask myself, why only three? And why must we limit the blessings of the Corona to this valley alone? Why should not a king send forth our people, and extend the authority of the Corona throughout Britain?”

  This baffled the people. “But, Your Radiance… if a man were sent out from the valley, could the Corona make him ever come back?” asked Ettarona.

  “We will not know until we try,” said Guillus calmly. “And I intend to try only with men who have families in the valley.”

  Now the concept of a hostage was ancient even at this time, so the crowd understood the implications at once. There was shuffling of feet and a general murmuring.

  “Extending our kingdom will not be accomplished without sacrifices, of course,” said the King. “I have long felt that the Corona’s authority must be increased even here in the valley, before we can unite to accomplish the King’s will across this entire island. And therefore, I issue the first of my new General Orders: Every morning, immediately upon rising, every one of you shall touch his right elbow to his right ear.”

  “What?” cried Argudanus among the general consternation. “But no one can do that! The order is impossible to obey!”

  “Precisely,” said Guillus. “From now on, everyone will start each day with one disobeyed order. The first-punishment will follow to remind you of your duties to the Corona, and any further disobedience will receive the harsher second punishment.”

  Irate hubbub arose as the people took in the inevitability of a daily first-punishment, but the King was not finished. “Be silent!” he shouted, and quiet glowering replaced the murmuring.

  “As I said, that is the first of my new General Orders. To continue: No one shall approach within five paces of the King without the King’s invitation. All edged weapons capable of injuring at a range of five paces shall be gathered into the King’s storerooms and issued only to his trusted guards and soldiers.

  “No one shall criticize, insult, or complain, against either the King, the King’s orders, the Corona, or the punishments of the Corona. Anyone who hears another who so criticizes, insults, or complains, will remove himself from that person’s presence, and neither listen nor speak to him.

  “Work shall begin tomorrow on a new residence for the King, a stone castle to rival the one at Camelot that Kincarius described to us yesterday. Every able-bodied man will labor upon this castle one day each week. There shall be a stone statue of the King, twice life size, in the courtyard, to be completed within one year.”

  As the King continued his remarks, the people grew too dazed even to grumble, even if they had not feared the retribution of the Corona. Even Ettarona stared at Guillus open-mouthed, shaking her head slightly with an unreadable expression.

  At last Guillus turned to Lunwyn, well-satisfied, and told her, “Approach, my dear. You will have to await our anniversary before I can present our castle to you, but for now the King’s house will serve very well. And now, since I know of no one in the valley better qualified to proclaim our marriage than I myself am, I declare—“

  But at this moment, a hooded youth leapt to the stage and strode up to the King, jerking him roughly by the arm away from Lunwyn, and cast him to the rickety floor, crying, “Don’t touch her, you filthy knave!” He flung off his cloak: it was Mauregal, out from his prison.

  “You!” sputtered the King. “You insolent fool! You’ve broken at least three commands this instant!” And Lunwyn, white-faced, shook her head at Mauregal before burying her face in her hands.

  “None who call upon the Christ for aid are subject to the curses of witches, and that is what this Corona is!” said Mauregal.

  “Christ? And who is that?” scoffed the King.

  Then a tall man covered in a horse blanket, who had been standing next to Ettarona, grabbed her arm and mounted the stage with her.

  He shouted, “The Christ is he who said to all men, ‘Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free!’” And doffing the blanket he showed himself to be Sir Sagredur, out of his armor but wearing his sword at his side. The stage creaked a bit as he went to Mauregal’s side, Ettarona in tow.

  “Now hear me, people of Palavel! However she has disguised herself these many years, this woman is no friend of yours. She is a witch! The Corona is all her doing. My squire is dead, and my word has been broken, all through her treachery.”

  Ettarona cowered at the rough treatment, and whimpered, “What are you saying? All in the valley know me! You all know he’s mistaken!”

  “The Corona and its punishments are the product of her witchcraft. They affect the inhabitants of this valley because a
ll here drink of brews made with ensorcelled mugwort that she provides. If you stop using her herbs, the Corona will have no more effect on you than it did on me yesterday!”

  Many in the crowd cried out at this, some in outrage and others in disbelief. Ettarona said, “Mauregal, tell this man! I’m no witch, I only gather herbs for the brewers, and live on the pittance it brings me!” She seemed about to weep.

  Mauregal swallowed hard. Could he be mistaken, after all? What if his discernment was wrong? I am happy to report in Mauregal’s favor, however, that it did not at this moment occur to him to fear what would happen if his discernment was right.

  In any case, he steeled himself and said, loud and clear, “Ettarona, I will never use your mugwort in my brewing again.” There was general commotion in the crowd at this, for though the knight was a stranger to them, Mauregal was known and respected.

  Ettarona’s face became utterly blank at his declaration. Somehow this seemed worse to him than if she had collapsed in tears. But still, he went on, “None who drink only of my brewing will be subject to the Corona. You know better than I how long its influence will linger when we no longer swallow your poison. A day? A week? Years? But however long it takes, even if only the children who never drank of your spells at all are free of it, soon enough all will know that those who avoid food and drink you have touched are no longer subject to the curses of the Corona.”

  And now he saw in her face the hardening, the defiance and bitterness he had known would be there in the end. “And when all have seen this, none will ever use your herbs again, and the Kings of the Corona will be at an end,” he concluded.

  Her mouth pursed in sour hatred, the crone said, “Then there is no point in going on.”

  The villagers jostled one another trying to see what was happening and understand what she had said, as she hobbled over to Guillus, now standing at the other end of the stage from the others. She reached up a shriveled hand to pat and pinch his cheek, and said, “Sorry, dearie: I was really looking forward to your reign.”

  With that, she reached her claw into the light of the Corona, and drew it out again. It seemed to stick and hold to her fingers so tightly that she cracked her knuckles as she pulled her hand back; the sound went on and on.

  And the Corona… went out.

  “It’s gone!” cried someone in the crowd.

  “What’s gone?” said Guillus, unable to keep up with what all the others could see. “What do you mean?” Then it finally dawned on him, and letting out a screech, he leapt at Ettarona.

  There was a flash of light and a sound like a small thunderclap, and Guillus was hurled sprawling into the crowd, where some of the disgusted villagers laid hold of him none too gently. Ettarona stood back and swept her gaze over the astonished assembly, finally resting on Sagredur.

  “Always and ever,” she said, “my fate is to make ill decisions when the sun is on the cusp between the Crab and Lion, and so again this year. I should never have helped save your life, thinking of all the harm you would wreak at Guillus’s command. For that matter, I ought never to have bent this stripling’s fruit down Caredan’s windpipe; he was a fool but he afflicted the people well enough.”

  Mauregal shook his head. “Well enough for what purpose? Ettarona, tell us why you’ve done this thing to our valley!”

  “My name is Tyronoë!” she cried. “At least I need never hear ‘Ettarona’ again! A hundred years and a year have I spent the midnight hour every summer Friday harvesting your mugwort in Nerthus’s glade, since the days when I was myself the queen in this valley.

  “Your king found me one day riding in pursuit of a unicorn, and wooed me with such honeyed words that I consented to be his queen, deigning to overlook that he was a mere mortal. Ill-fortuned day, with sun between the Crab and Lion, as now! A year later the sun was again in that sign; I had born him a son, and he bade me cast its fortune, and I did so, and-again deciding awry-I told him truthfully that on account of that child, the land of Palavel would be enslaved for a hundred years.

  “At this the King’s face fell, and he bellowed in red-faced outrage, as though he could bend Fate by waxing wroth with a child! But I protected the infant from his madness, and another year passed, until the sun was again in my unlucky sign, and—ill judgment!—I decided to leave the child hidden in the care of the common folk, and visit my sister, Morgana.”

  “You are a sister of Morgana le Fey?” interrupted Sir Sagredur.

  “Oh, yes,” smirked the witch, “everyone knows Morgana, from her dalliance with your Arthur. Here, perhaps you will see the resemblance better…” She gestured with her withered hands, and with a shimmer of light stood transformed into a lady of proud bearing, hair like midnight and smoldering blue eyes, dressed in flowing purple robes. Her ferret she still cradled in her left arm.

  Then she continued, her voice now a rich contralto: “But when I returned, I found those I had left to care for the child had betrayed me, and given him up to the King, who had put his own son to death! I wailed and asked them, why? And none could answer but to say, ‘The King himself ordered it; we could not but do as the King had ordered.’”

  She looked upon the people of Palavel with burning hatred. “Then I flew from the kingdom, and for another year I devised the curse of the Corona, and returned to enslave the valley to its vile kings. Do you see?” She laughed, and spun around once, and was the hag Ettarona again, and said, “Do as the King says, now; I’ve outlived many a whippersnapper who thought fit to defy the Corona!” She threw her head back and laughed, and spun again, and was again the beautiful but evil Tyronoë.

  “But it was that king who wronged you, not our ancestors,” said Lunwyn. “What became of him?”

  She grinned obscenely at the question. “Why, I forgot to tell you his name,” she crowed. “The King’s name—was Vorrex!” And she held aloft her ferret, laughing hysterically.

  Mauregal felt sick, and Sagredur cried out, “This is monstrous, Tyronoë! Vengeance is the Lord’s!”

  “I once thought thus,” she scoffed. “These hundred years I find I do it pretty well myself. But Vorrex suffers not; I have only chosen a new shape for him, as I do now and then. Only this spring I was strolling through the country beyond the walls of this valley, and when some fools offered me insult I gave Vorrex a new form to pay them for it. Perhaps you would like that one better!”

  She tossed the animal to the floor and gestured at it, and it grew into a huge boar. A cry arose from the people around, and they scrambled to back away.

  “That boar has killed seventeen men!” shouted Sagredur, drawing his sword.

  “Nineteen,” said Tyronoë. “But all mere peasants. Fitting that his twentieth shall be a knight of the Table Round!” And at her command, the huge beast lunged in the knight’s direction.

  Mauregal and Sagredur each grabbed one of Lunwyn’s arms and leapt from the stage away from the charging creature.

  But as it crossed the middle of the stage, the rickety planks collapsed underneath its weight. It tumbled downward, well below the level of the ground, and all the people saw that a pit had been dug under the stage, with sides sloping inward, and in the very bottom of the conical indentation into which the boar fell, jutted up spears propped into the ground. Several of these impaled the boar, and it bellowed in rage and pain.

  Tyronoë looked on aghast, while the knight took careful aim and drove his sword straight and deep into the boar’s open maw. Nor did he leave off from cleaving until his blade found the beast’s heart and its cries ceased.

  The witch screamed in mortification, and readied to hurl a thunderclap at Sagredur; gazing steadily into her eyes, he blessed himself with the sign of the Cross, and the bolt she hurled at him popped ineffectually. Then she turned to him her back, which sprouted enormous wings like a bat’s, and lifted herself into the air and away.

  In the quiet that followed, Sagredur sat down and began cleaning the blood from his sword. All the villagers were stunned by the proc
eedings. It was young Senne who asked the knight, “Here, sir, do you think we’re safe now?”

  Sagredur eyed the speck in the sky that was the departing witch. “Doesn’t look like she’s coming back, but there’s no telling. I suppose you’re as safe against witches as pagans can be.” He sheathed the sword again and stood, and gave a great sigh. “I’ll ask King Arthur to send missionaries to instruct you in the faith, so as many as wish to take the Christ’s protection may do so.”

  Then he turned to Lunwyn, smiling, and said, “But you all convened today to witness this maiden’s wedding. Of course, with the Corona gone, it’s up to her own will whether and when and to whom she would marry: even as it should be. Still, if she wanted to make a choice—”

  “I choose Mauregal!” Lunwyn cried out, laughing and crying at once.

  Mauregal took her in his arms and they embraced. And at last the people gave a rousing cheer; all except Guillus, who looked very sour, and slunk off as soon as he could.

  “As you said, preparation makes any job easier,” said Sir Sagredur. They were seated at the head table of the outdoor wedding feast, all the villagers partying around them, with trenchers of roast pork and mugs of brown ale before them—except for Sagredur, who still had only water.

  “It was Mauregal’s plan. Gautius, Ganuan, and their brothers Idwallo and Imanor dug the pit in the waning hours of the night; Argudanus lent the spears for the trap, and Mauregal and I knocked together the stage from sections of the walls of that old barn you called a prison. The tricky part was reinforcing them enough to hold together at all under the weight of even a few people. We knew it would never hold up under the boar, so we only had to make sure the stage was between us and the witch before she transformed it.”