The Book of Horses and Unicorns

by Jackie French

The fires were lit. A man-at-arms returned on horseback from the castle with baskets and kettles and laid them on the ground before the king and Suzanne. Servants began to set up the braziers on each side of the grey horse, and erect the poles and covering. Suzanne laid the blankets over him and tucked them as far beneath the great grey body as she could as well.

  ‘What first?’ asked the king. ‘Shall I pull the lance out?’

  ‘No!’ cried Suzanne. ‘That’s the worst thing you can do! I beg your pardon, Sire. I mean we have to push it through, not pull it, or we’ll cause even more damage.’

  Arthur nodded. ‘I see. Like an arrow. If a man is to live, an arrow must be pushed, not pulled, as well. Very well.’ He took out his knife and began to saw through the wood of the lance. The horse shuddered, and showed the whites of his eyes.

  ‘Gently, Sire,’ ordered Suzanne.

  The king raised an eyebrow. ‘I’m trying to,’ was all he said.

  The lance fell back onto the grass. Only the metal tip now protruded from the horse’s flesh. The blood still dripped onto the grass.

  ‘Should I push the tip through?’ asked the king.

  ‘Not yet,’ said Suzanne quickly.

  The kettles were steaming on the fire. Suzanne added the lavender and camomile flowers, the rosemary leaves, and the comfrey root to one kettle, then poured boiling water from the second into a pewter goblet and added wine and bread and honey. She handed this to the king.

  ‘Drink,’ she said. ‘You’ll do no-one any good if you collapse.’

  The servants stared at her back as though they expected lightning to strike, at this discourtesy to the king. The king waved them away, back to the edge of the clearing.

  ‘You’re bossy,’ he observed, sipping his hot sops in wine.

  ‘So are you,’ said Suzanne. She was checking the bandages now, long wide strips of leather, pounded till soft.

  ‘But I’m king,’ Arthur pointed out.

  Suzanne flushed. ‘I’m sorry, Sire,’ she said. ‘I … since my uncle’s death, you see, there has been no-one else to command the castle. Sir Baris, the black knight was rarely at home, and when he was he was drunk. He preferred tournaments to tending his lands, and for that at least we were grateful. Sir Baris away was better than Sir Baris at home — hold this will you?’

  The king held one end of the bandage as she measured it against the horse.

  ‘How old are you?’ asked the king.

  ‘Fourteen.’ She flushed again. ‘You thought I was younger.’

  ‘And now you seem older. It was a great responsibility for a fourteen-year-old girl.’

  ‘I managed,’ said Suzanne shortly. The king noticed she did not claim it had been easy.

  The kettle had boiled enough now. Suzanne tipped the bandages and the wool into the simmering water, then poured some of the herb water into another goblet. The water steamed, green and fragrant as she washed her hands. Slowly, very slowly, she pushed at the remains of the lance. At first it didn’t move, then suddenly the exit wound gaped large. The lance head slipped out, followed by a gush of blood.

  Suzanne looked apologetically at the king. ‘I know it looks as though I have made it worse,’ she said. ‘But the bleeding helps to clean the wound, and having two holes is better than one, though you may not think it. It means the wound can drain instead of going bad inside.’

  ‘I understand,’ said Arthur abruptly. ‘I too have seen wounds before.’

  Suzanne grasped the brandy bottle. ‘This will hurt him,’ she whispered, ‘but it has to be cleaned.’

  The king nodded. He pressed his hands to the great grey neck as Suzanne poured brandy into the wound. The horse groaned and shuddered, then lay still, his breathing long and laboured. The blood ran dark from the exit wound, then slowly lightened as it mixed with the brandy.

  Suzanne lifted the lump of wool out of the kettle with the silver knife, then pressed half of it deep into the exit wound. The other half poked out. ‘That will keep the wound open,’ she said. ‘So that the badness can drain out. I’ll have to change it every day if he lives.’

  ‘If he lives,’ said Arthur softly.

  Suzanne nodded. She lifted the bandages now, spread honey on one square and held it to the larger wound where the lance had gone in. ‘Now to stop the bleeding. Hold this,’ she commanded the king. Arthur nodded and stretched out his hands.

  Suzanne took the longest bandage, tied it across the square one, round the horse’s shoulders and over his back and tied it tightly. This she repeated with the others, so the larger wound was covered tightly in all directions. ‘They’ll tighten as they dry,’ she said, ‘and hold the edges of the wound together. At least I hope so. It will heal quicker that way.’

  ‘If it heals at all,’ said the king, his glance going to the bloody lance on the grass.

  ‘I made no promises,’ said Suzanne. ‘I just said there was a chance.’

  ‘What do you think now?’

  ‘I think there is a chance.’ She picked up a piece of bread and began to nibble it.

  ‘Now what?’ asked the king.

  ‘We wait. If he gets to his feet, he will recover. If he doesn’t … but there is no need for you to stay, Sire.’

  ‘No, I will stay,’ said the king. ‘I owe him that.’

  The fires flickered. The shadows were thickening now in the forest. A frog began to beep. At the edge of the clearing the servants and men at arms wrapped themselves in their cloaks and began to get comfortable.

  Neither the king nor Suzanne spoke for a while. The horse panted on the ground beside them, as King Arthur stroked his neck. ‘I’m here, old man,’ he whispered.

  ‘Sire?’

  ‘Yes,’ said the king absently. He was watching the horse.

  ‘Would you … would you stay like this for any of your … your dependents?’

  ‘What? No,’ said the king slowly. ‘I have had men under my command injured and have left them to die, while I went on to other battles — knights of my own Round Table too. But Grey Nose is different, he is my friend.’

  Suzanne blinked. ‘What did you call him?’

  ‘Eh? Oh, he has some long French name; I never used it. I always called him Grey Nose from the moment I first met him.’

  The king smiled. His eyes were far away. ‘Fifteen years ago it was,’ he said, ‘I was only two years older than you are now. I was small for my age, like you. There was a tournament, you see. My brother — my foster brother, Sir Kay, had forgotten his sword. I was too young to compete, so I rode back to get it, and there was this other sword in the Churchyard, a sword in a stone.’

  The king shrugged. ‘So I pulled it out. It seemed easier than riding all the way back, that’s all. And they asked me to do it again, so I put the sword back, and pulled it out …’ The king shook his head. ‘And when I turned round they were kneeling to me, my foster father and my brother. I had to do it again, at Candlemas, pull that sword from the stone with the barons watching and all the common people, and then they knelt to me as well, and suddenly I was king of England.’

  Suzanne snorted. ‘It doesn’t seem a very good way to choose a king.’

  The king laughed for the first time since his horse had fallen. The first time in many months, he realised. Or maybe years. ‘No, it wasn’t a good test, I agree. But it turned out that I was King Uther Pendragon’s son too, given to my foster father at birth to keep me safe. But you are right. Neither of those is enough to make a good king.

  ‘I knew nothing about being king, good or otherwise. I was just a lad in too-short leggings, because I was finally starting to grow. But they gave me a crown and they gave me a horse; this great grey horse with a long French name, and he looked down his long grey nose at me and I tell you, he laughed at me.’ The king smiled at the memory. ‘We were friends from then on. Who else would have the courage to laugh at a king, even if that king knew nothing of kingship?’ The king paused. ‘He has been my only friend for fifteen years.’

&nbs
p; ‘But …’ began Suzanne hesitantly. ‘Sir Kay, your foster brother … he called you Arthur, not “your Majesty”.’

  ‘No,’ said the king softly. ‘Sir Kay is not my friend. When a man has knelt to you in the dust of a churchyard, he can never be your friend again. I would trust Sir Kay with my life, but that is not the same thing as a friend. When you are king, you have no friends. A man must be your equal to be your friend. I am responsible for all of England, and until a man has felt that burden he can never really be my friend.’

  ‘But Grey Nose has never felt the burden of all England,’ pointed out Suzanne.

  The king laughed again. ‘He has felt the burden of me on his back, and I am England. No, they chose well when they gave me Grey Nose.

  ‘He wasn’t a young horse, even then. He was eight, perhaps, or nine. He was trained, as I was not. He knew how to step proudly at the front of a procession, which I had never done. He knew how to charge straight and true in the joust, whereas I was just a beginner. He would rear to defend me when knights slashed at me with their swords. He would strike them with his fore hooves and kick with his hind hooves. Whenever I wondered what to do in those early years of my reign, I looked at Grey Nose and he looked down his great nose at me and grinned and showed me how.’

  The king stroked the horse again, but Grey Nose made no sign that he felt his touch. Arthur sighed, but he left his hand on the grey neck.

  They sat silently for a while. It was quite dark now. The braziers glowed red. The king stood and threw more wood on the fire, then sat next to the horse again. At the edge of the clearing the servants had built a fire too, larger than the one that warmed the king and Suzanne and Grey Nose.

  ‘There have been many battles in those fifteen years,’ said the king at last. ‘I had to fight King Lot of Lothian and Orkney and his five hundred knights, and the Kings of Scotland and Carados too, and the man they called the King of a Hundred Knights. They would have no beardless boy as king, they said. I could never hold the country, I thought. How could I even have time to raise an army, with so many against me?

  ‘But I looked at Grey Nose and he looked at me, and I remembered where he had come from. So I sent Sir Kay to France to beg assistance, and two French kings, King Ban and King Bors, brought their men to aid me. Their men fought for me, and the common people fought for me as well, but there have been too many battles. I have had fifteen years of it, and sometimes they feel like a thousand. And there will be more battles still to come …’

  ‘How do you know?’ whispered Suzanne.

  ‘Because there are always men like your Sir Baris who take what they want and have no honour. One day, perhaps, there will be another way to stop them. But for now …’ he shrugged. ‘What is the duty of a knight? To fight against treachery, to fend off injustice for the poor, to make peace in your own province, to shed blood for your brethren and, if needs must be, to lay down your life. That is the duty of a king as well. And of a horse, I suppose.’

  Arthur stroked the grey neck again. ‘I think they expected Grey Nose to turn white, you know, as we both grew older. A white horse for a good king. But he’s stubborn. He was a grey horse then, and he’s a grey horse now. And I have never been a perfect king, so we fit together well. A grey horse for a less than perfect king. But I have done my best, as he has done.’

  ‘Why weren’t you a perfect king, Sire?’ asked Suzanne.

  King Arthur smiled at her. ‘If you were older, or a king, you wouldn’t ask that question. No man can be perfect. There have been … incidents,’ he added shortly, and Suzanne remembered a tale whispered in the kitchens when she was small, about how the king had ordered all the babies in the kingdom killed, in order to destroy the one that Merlin had prophesied would take his throne.

  ‘People die,’ whispered the king in the darkness, ‘and sometimes they are the evil ones, like your Sir Baris. But sometimes they are innocent, killed so that good might triumph in the end. Men caught up in battle, families whose good men have died in my cause. If it is right that innocent men die, that families starve because they are gone, surely it is right that babies may die too?’

  ‘No,’ said Suzanne.

  ‘No?’ asked the king.

  ‘No, it could never be right to kill babies. Your soldiers chose to fight, the babies had no choice at all.’

  ‘Not even to save the kingdom from a war? A war in which many, many more will die who are as innocent as those babies?’

  Suzanne looked up as though to say more, then caught the king’s gaze and was silent.

  Arthur shook his head. ‘I do not know. I am just a king. My job is to fight, not answer questions. But sometimes in the darkness their voices whisper — the men who have died, the innocents who have suffered — and I do not know. No, I have not been a perfect king.’

  Suzanne shivered. The night seemed to have closed in on them now.

  ‘Take my cloak,’ said the king.

  ‘No, Sire …’

  The king removed his cloak and put it round her shoulders. It was warm from his body. ‘Take it,’ he said roughly. ‘I have sat by many camp fires and through many nights without a fire too. I no longer feel the cold.’ His hands stroked the horse again. ‘Besides, Grey Nose will keep me warm, even if this is the last night he will do so.’

  Suzanne’s eyes closed. She must have slept, for when she opened them again the stars had shifted across the sky and the moon had risen too, a short sickle of a moon. The king’s hand still rested on the grey horse’s neck, but he no longer stroked it.

  For a moment Suzanne wondered if perhaps the horse had died while she slept. She struggled upright. ‘How is he?’ she whispered urgently.

  ‘Still breathing,’ said the king tiredly. He stood, and threw more wood on the fire. It was only red coals now, but the wood caught and sparked into the night. ‘I didn’t want to disturb you by throwing wood on before,’ explained the king. ‘It will be morning soon.’

  Suzanne rubbed her eyes. She wanted to ask, what will happen to our castle now and the people and the lands around? But the king was looking at the horse, and she felt she couldn’t speak.

  The fire at the edge of the clearing had died down too. The men-at-arms were asleep. Through the darkness Suzanne could see the castle, beyond the mist that shimmered above the lake. She hoped that Sir Kay was treating the people there well.

  ‘Sir Kay is a good man,’ said the king, as though reading her thoughts. ‘All the Knights of the Round Table have given their oath. Over and above the oaths all knights must take.’

  ‘What does the oath say?’

  ‘To give mercy when mercy is asked. To protect women and children and enforce their rights, and never to enforce lust upon them. Never to fight in an unjust cause or fight for personal gain. Every year at the High Feast of Pentecost they renew their oath.’

  ‘It is a hard oath to take,’ said Suzanne sleepily. ‘Especially not to fight for gain.’

  ‘If it was easy to keep, there would be no use taking an oath,’ said the king, sitting down again by Grey Nose.

  Suzanne wondered if he had slept at all. She thought not.

  She bent forward and felt the bandages. They felt dry, the blood crusted at the edges. The wound had stopped bleeding, though fluid still seeped through the wool at the other side. She felt the pulse on the great grey neck. ‘He should have got to his feet by now,’ she said worriedly. ‘I’m afraid …’

  ‘He’s had his chance,’ said King Arthur gently. ‘We’ll give him a little longer. Better a swift death than a lingering one. That’s all any one of us asks who expects to die in battle. We’ll wait till the sun has risen. Then you will go back to the castle, and I … I will do what I have to do.’

  He meant he would kill the horse, thought Suzanne, as he had been going to do before she interrupted. ‘No,’ she said. ‘If that’s what needs to be done, I’ll stay with you till it’s over.’

  ‘So very young to give orders to the king,’ murmured Arthur.
/>   ‘Nonetheless,’ said Suzanne stubbornly. ‘I’ll stay. England is your duty. This horse is mine.’

  A cuckoo sang softly in the forest. The stars faded to silver and then to grey, then mingled with the greying sky and were gone. It would be a bright clear day, thought Suzanne.

  ‘Please get up, Grey Nose,’ she pleaded in her mind.

  The men stirred at the edge of the clearing. There were sounds of voices and splintering firewood for the first time since the quietness of the night.

  Behind the castle the sky turned pink, then red, then gold as the sun slipped above the horizon. The mist shivered above the lake and vanished with the last shadows of the night.

  The king gazed at the grey horse. ‘Well, my friend,’ he began softly.

  Suddenly the great horse moved. Slowly he raised his neck and head, his whole front braced on his extended front legs. He paused for a long moment, and the eyes above the long grey nose seemed to meet the king’s. Finally, with enormous effort, the horse heaved himself up from his haunches. For a moment Suzanne thought that he might fall again, but although he kept his weight off his forefoot, he stayed steady.

  Suzanne stood too, almost as shakily as the horse. Her legs were cold and stiff. She stepped over to Grey Nose and felt the bandages. They were still tight, but not too tight. The bleeding hadn’t started again, and the wool at the drainage hole was still in place. She gestured to one of the men-at-arms seated on the edge of the clearing. He ran over with a clank of chain mail. ‘Fetch fresh water,’ she ordered.

  The man looked at King Arthur. Arthur nodded wearily. The man ran off.

  ‘He’ll live then?’ the king asked softly.

  ‘He’ll live,’ said Suzanne. She hesitated. ‘But he will not fight again, Your Majesty. Nor will he carry you long distances.’

  The old horse butted the king’s shoulder. For the first time since she had met him there were tears in the king’s eyes. He reached into his pouch, and pulled out a jagged lump of something hard and brown. He held it out on the palm of his hand, and the grey horse nuzzled it up.

  ‘Sugar,’ explained the king. ‘It comes from the Holy Land.’