The Wolf and the Crown (The Perilous Order of Camelot Book 3)

by A. A. Attanasio

  Amazed by what the wizard had accomplished, Dagonet paused among the ranks of yews beside the mammoth pylon of the citadel and looked back, hoping to catch Merlin's eye and salute him.

  The wizard stood engaged in somber discussion with the king and his warriors. Merlin's big hands turned palms upward, offering ignorance. The king and his men shared disconcerted looks, and those atop their sable horses began to dismount.

  Dagonet determined he would find out later what troubled them. For now, he had to locate Eufrasia and discover for himself if his quest for the king offered the one treasure he desired above all others. He crossed the busy bailey, sidestepping bustling market-workers conveying barrows of vegetables and sacks of milled grain to the cookhouse for that day's feast.

  The outer ward thrived with soldiers from the barracks, who aired their wounds in the morning sun, cleaning weapons, talking, some sullenly, others excitedly, about the battle they had survived.

  Aidan had directed him to the inner ward and Lot's cloistered wing of the castle, where Arthor's pagan Celts lived when in Camelot. Children frolicked about the Maypole that the Druids had erected in the grassy courtyard for their sun ceremonies, and women sat on settles in the cool shadows of the colonnade, chatting and stitching torn buckskins.

  A cypress garden opened behind the yard's chuckling marble fountain, its flower-banked rivulets fed by the run-off. Eufrasia, in a saffron gown, flaxen hair braided intricately down her long back, sat on a mossy boulder, watching small birds splashing in a rill.

  Lord Monkey leaped among the curtains of a willow to explore its shaggy depths, and its excited chitterings caught Eufrasia's attention. When she saw Dagonet, she rose, and a blush lit her cheeks.

  Already she knew, looking from inside her soul, she could never get close enough—there was no such thing as enough, not with this man. And as he came to her, she knew by the soft light in his eyes and his pupils widening, opening his deepest self to her, that he had already taken her into himself.

  Sky Deep as Heaven

  Days later, with all the king's fallen identified and properly buried, the enemy dead burned and King Wesc's death poetry for his warriors recited over their ashes, the coronation of King Arthor jammed the wards of Camelot. In the central courtyard, a platform stood draped in the red and white banners of the king, and Arthor sat at its center upon an oaken throne carved elaborately with the devices of the dragon and the unicorn from his lineage.

  The bells of Camelot rang incessantly that day and fell silent only for the spoken invocation and the recitation of the king's ascendancy. Flanked by his commanders and attended by his mother and by the wizard Merlin, Arthor received the blessing of the archbishop, who read aloud the official recognition from Pope Gelasius of Arthor's unchallenged title as high king of Britain.

  After anointing the king's chaplet and placing it upon his head, the archbishop conducted Mass with Arthor, and the priests distributed the Eucharist among the crowd. The Celtic hieros and his green-robed Druids also knelt to receive the sanctified bread of Yesu, the all-heal, and to drink of the vine that climbs to the light.

  Urien as well as Lot and his sons, Gawain and Gareth, knelt with the Druids and afterward led the Celtic sundance in honor of the king. Only Morgeu was absent, refusing to abide the presence of Merlin. Yet, in honor of her brother, whose love had spared her child Mordred, she draped the king's red eagle from the windows of her suite. And she stood upon the open balcony of her tower with her infant in her arms when the archbishop placed the anointed chaplet upon Arthor's head.

  After the king and his commanders had stepped down from the platform and mounted their steeds to parade through Camelot and lead the populace on a celebratory march around the citadel, Ygrane blessed them as she had promised she would.

  She had intended to hold aloft the Graal. Instead she spread wide her white-robed arms and said loudly to her son and his men, "You are the hope of Britain. Your blood will be the tears of generations. Gifts of God, you have come to be given. And what you give will lead us who follow you to the thankful days. Hold fast, brave warriors, to your faith in God and to each other. Hold fast against the ancient order of might and brutality. You are protectors of the meek. Your strength champions mercy and love, and your bravery defends a perilous order. Love well, and there is no end to how loved you shall be."

  Urien, naked but for white kid-leather boots, fawnskin thong, and a sword strapped to his back led the parade with his salt-blond hair streaming free in the spring breezes. Lot and his two sons followed, dressed as sparely, in the manner of the old Celts who lived to feel again the goodness of the day after the fierce battle.

  Marcus, blond and bearded as a Saxon, rode proudly after them, waving the king's white banner emblazoned with the red eagle. Bors Bona, his squat frame gleaming in polished breastplate and helmet, accepted the boisterous gratitude of the assembly with raised sword.

  Kyner and Cei came next in their white tunics marked by red crosses, bearing a chi-rho banner between them. Bedevere pranced afterward in full battle regalia, frequently turning to keep a protective eye upon the king, who rode laughing like a boy among the adulate multitude, arms upraised victoriously, happy face lifted to a blue sky deep as heaven.

  A Dawn of Butterflies

  Weeks later, on the anniversary of the summer day when he had drawn the sword Excalibur from the stone, King Arthor left Camelot in the dark before dawn. Alone, with Bedevere a distant shadow, he limped across the champaign, through grassy upland fields, to the woods behind the citadel.

  A full year had passed since he had known the freedom of anonymity. After the battles and the carnage, renown imposed the heaviest burden for him as king. There was no one with whom he could speak simply as a man. And there was surely no woman who could accept him simply as a man. That was the weight of his life's truth.

  The lust that, the year before, had made him vulnerable to Morgeu's seduction added its weight to this truth. He felt desire. The whole world seemed to carry that desire.

  Standing at last on the wooded bluff above a cataract spilling from the mountains into the river, boulders in the dark below looked as though whitewashed with milk. He felt aghast at the desire of the stream for the sea. That was a power no one could resist, not even a king. He would have to find a woman—his woman. That was his personal quest, as urgent and necessary as the river's journey.

  Another mission summoned him. The Graal had not been found, though every cranny of the citadel had been searched. Merlin claimed the angels had spirited it away. The wizard wanted him to conduct a search for it across the kingdom.

  Shrouded by epics and sacred legends, the chalice offered his warriors a purpose other than war. So Merlin claimed. It united them to an ambition greater than combat.

  Arthor needed his commanders for more mundane services—patrols against the ever-encroaching invaders, protection of the highways and outlying villas from brigands, and maintenance of municipal properties: bridges, dams, harbors, and the decaying roadways. So much work.

  He sat down and counted clouds, melon-pink in the rising light. The wound in his thigh throbbed. It had not healed cleanly, despite the best ministrations of his surgeons.

  Merlin feared a supernatural wound, Arthor's kingship maimed by the deaths of the many Britons who had died opposed to him. The Graal would heal that regal injury, the wizard seemed certain. The Graal—the Graal...

  Mingled bells rang upward from the lower meadows, announcing the day—chapel matins, shepherds driving their flocks to graze, goose girls tolling for their birds. In the widening dawn, he looked down on the towers of Camelot, misty fields, the scarred forest, and the scaffolded rooftops of Cold Kitchen still under repair.

  The sight pressed his heart with emotion. This was the center of his kingdom—the glory he served. Here was the secret of himself that he knew led to a happy death: the chill in the air, the thatched roofs, plumes of smoke from hearth fires, a dog by the gate, hedgerows at the end of the lane, bl
ackthorns and elms, and slopes of half-awakened flowers.

  Arthor sat still as the lustrous sun cleared the hills and stirred mists in the dells to move like invisible horses. A dawn of butterflies climbed down the high bluffs with the ruddy sunlight.

  Across the ashes and cinders of the fields, where the blood of the slain had soaked the land, acres of flowers bloomed: Lilacs lifted their pale torches, gold trumpets of daffodils shone beside pink morning glories and blue gentians.

  And everywhere among blossoms trembling in the unraveling wind, butterflies jostled, flitting with busy love, souls released from the dark, free again to thrive on beauty and light.

  * * *

  Characters

  Aidan — clan chief, master of the Spiral Castle, a natural fastness in the highlands of Caledonia.

  Annwn — the Other World, Celtic realm of the supernatural, used in this series oftentimes to identify the radiant beings that emerged with the fiery origins of Creation: cf. Fire Lords.

  Arthor — Aquila Regalis Thor, Royal Eagle of Thor, son of Uther Pendragon, deceased high king of Britain, and Ygrane, queen of the Celts.

  Azael — demon; former cohort of Lailoken.

  Bedevere — one-armed steward to King Arthor.

  Bors Bona — British warlord and commander of the Parisi.

  Cei — son of Kyner; step-brother of Arthor.

  Cruithni — king of the Picts.

  Cupetianus — spokesman for the fisherfolk of Neptune's Toes.

  Dagonet — dwarf vagabond and gleeman of King Arthor's court.

  Daoine Sid — the pale people, elves and faeries relegated to dwell underground in the hollow hills since their overthrow by the Fauni and the north gods.

  Dwellers in the House of Fog — demons; once radiant, these dark, masculine beings despair of finding their way back to the source of infinite energy from which they entered the cold and dark of spacetime with the Big Bang; they doffed the burning light of their prior forms, trying to adapt to the frigid, near-lightless vacuum where they find themselves; they rail against Creation and do all in their power to disassemble the conglomerates of matter, believing all structure, especially organic life, a mockery of their luminous lives before their miserable exile.

  Eufrasia — daughter of Aidan.

  Fauni - the gods of the Greeks and Romans.

  Fire Lords — angels; the radiant masculine beings expelled from the compact dimensions of Creation's origin at the Big Bang; they cherish the hope of returning whence they have come and, cleaving to the burning scraps of their fiery origin, have devoted themselves to furthering the assemblages of matter to attain greater awareness; they foster the knowledge of science by mortals, intending to use technology to open a way back to heaven.

  Foederatus — an alliance of the north tribes: the Angles, Frisians, Jutes, Picts, Saxons, and Scoti determined to conquer Britain.

  Furor, the — the one-eyed chieftain among the gods of the north tribes, possessed of the trance power to see the future; he devoted himself to fending off the terrible destiny of Apocalypse that he believed the Fire Lords inspired in humanity by teaching mortals the secrets of writing and numbers, the globe-threatening dangers of science.

  Gareth — younger son of Morgeu and Lot.

  Gawain — elder son of Morgeu and Lot.

  God — the mysterious and singular Female Being, Who emerged with the energies of Creation at the Big Bang and Who was followed from that hyperdimensional reality of infinite energy by numerous masculine beings devoted to Her — demons and angels.

  Gorthyn — self-proclaimed king of the Belgae; commander of that realm's brigands.

  Guthlac — fierce wayfarer of the Picts, leader of a warband that infiltrated the Spiral Castle.

  Hjuki — Lawspeaker for King Wesc.

  Keeper of the Dusk Apples — goddess of the north tribes responsible for collecting the rare golden fruit used to make the ritual wine that the gods imbibe; mistress of the Furor.

  Kyner — Christian Celt and chieftain of the clans of Cymru; father of Cei and stepfather of Arthor.

  Lailoken — the demon who, in the guise of an incubus, attempted to rape Saint Optima, a devout Christian nun; mysteriously taken into her womb, the demon incarnated as Optima's child, birthed as an old man aging younger; he learned love from his devout mother and converted to Christianity endowed with the supernatural powers of a demon in mortal form: Merlin.

  Lord Monkey — familiar of Dagonet.

  Lot — Celtic chieftain of the northern clans of Britain; husband of Morgeu the Fey; father of Gawain and Gareth.

  Marcus — Christian warlord and duke of the Dumnoni.

  Merlin — the mortal name of the demon Lailoken.

  Mordred — incest-child born of Arthor and Morgeu.

  Morgeu — daughter of Ygrane, queen of the Celts, and Gorlois, a duke of the Dumnoni killed in battle on the fields of Londinium; her epithet, the Fey, the Doomed, came to her from the Picts during her time of self-exile in Caledonia, where she practiced black magic; she seduced her half-brother Arthor by enchantment in an attempt to exact revenge on Merlin, whom she holds responsible for her father's death; wife of Lot and mother by him of Gawain and Gareth.

  Nynyve — the Lady of the Lake, the youngest of the Nine Queens; once mortal queens, made supernatural residents of Avalon by the Fire Lords, they represent the ninety thousand years of human history ruled by queens.

  Platorius — count and Christian commander of the Atrebates.

  Rex Mundi — Lord of the World; a magical assemblage amalgamated by Merlin to integrate himself, the demon Azael, Dagonet, Lord Monkey and a Fire Lord.

  Selwa — seductive assassin of the Syrax family; niece of Severus Syrax.

  Severus Syrax — magister militum of Londinium, trade factor in Britain of the Syrax family, an international mercantile conglomerate.

  Skuld — of the three Wyrd Sisters, the Norns, the youngest, possessed of the ability to scry the future.

  Someone Knows the Truth — the elk-headed god of the Daoine Sid, master of the hollow hills and the Happy Woods, where the souls of the Celtic dead bide their time before reincarnating upon Middle Earth in forms human and otherwise.

  Terpillius — vampyre procured by blood magic and induced into the service of Morgeu the Fey.

  Urd — the Wyrd Sister crone of the Norns endowed with the power to reveal the past.

  Urien — Celtic chieftain of the Durotriges.

  Verthandi — of the Norns, the loveliest Wyrd Sister, gifted with penetrating vision of all that is.

  Wesc — king of the Saxons, leader of the Foederatus, ambitious for peace and enthralled with the writing of sacred poetry, resident of Britain in the province of the Cantii.

  Wolf Warriors — elite Saxon fighting forces devoted to the Furor and dedicated to dying in battle for the glory of their god.

  Yggdrasil — the World Tree, the Storm Tree, the Cosmic Tree, the magnetic field of the planet; its upper branches, reaching far above the atmosphere, serve as home for the dominant gods; its trunk penetrates Middle Earth, the planetary surface where mortals dwell; and its roots coil deep into the molten interior of the globe, where the world-vast Dragon, a chthonic magnetic sentience, slumbers.

  Ygrane — former queen of the Celts, mother of Morgeu (by Gorlois) and Arthor (by Uther Pendragon), abbess of Tintagel Abbey and Mother Superior of the Holy Order of the Graal.

  Author's Comments

  I wrote The Perilous Order of Camelot to experience Arthurian fantasy as intimately as I could. I love the genre. The fairy tale quality of this thousand-year-old legend expresses a lot of soul, by which I mean mystic beauty. Avalon, the Isle of Apples, for example. Or the mysterious Lady of the Lake. And the weird Fisher King. Don't get me started on the Grail!

  I wanted to embrace this myth, to know that mystic beauty aggressively as a writer. And so, I decided to use a different literary approach for each book in this series.

  In the first volume, The Dragon an
d the Unicorn, present tense touches with immediacy the distant past of the legend, the time before the great king is born. Then, in the second, The Eagle and the Sword, the little-known history of the king's cruelty as a boy informs a 'well-known' style of conventional narrative.

  With The Wolf and the Crown, which recounts a warrior king's initiation of blood, beginnings are the theme, and a new chapter begins every 500 words or so. This pulsing narration and kaleidoscopic array of characters dramatize the urgency of the boy-king's life that year.

  The next book, The Serpent and the Grail, returns to a traditional style, because it concerns the famous quest for the Holy Grail. That's such a supernatural feature of Arthurian myth, a naturalistic setting enhances its strangeness.

  All four volumes of The Perilous Order of Camelot originally appeared as print books from HarperCollins 1996—1999. Re-issuing them as ebooks has given me the creative opportunity to revise the texts—and to return to the Britain of Merlin and magic.

  http://www.aaattanasio.com

  eBooks Available from A. A. Attanasio

  (newly revised by the author)

  The Radix Tetrad

  The volumes of this series can each be read independently of the others. The feature that unifies them is their individual adaptation of science fiction’s sub-genre: “space opera,” which the editors David G. Hartwell and Kathryn Cramer define as "colorful, dramatic, large-scale science fiction adventure, competently and sometimes beautifully written, usually focused on a sympathetic, heroic central character and plot action, and usually set in the relatively distant future, and in space or on other worlds, characteristically optimistic in tone. It often deals with war, piracy, military virtues, and very large-scale action, large stakes."