Camelot

by Giles Kristian

  ‘God receive him,’ Father Dristan muttered.

  I said nothing. I knew what Father Judoc referred to by my importance. It was said that when I came to the monastery, the Thorn had blossomed that autumn. Previously, so the brothers said, the holy tree had flowered once in a year, in spring. But ever since my coming, it had flowered most winters also, which Prior Drustanus had proclaimed was a great miracle, though it had meant little to me as a ten-year-old boy. There had been scarce talk of the miracle since, but Father Judoc raised it now as a way of urging me to consider my place among them. As though my being one of them was somehow preordained.

  Father Judoc eyed the tumble of stones still lying in the mud, then pointed at the one he wanted. ‘We all have our place, Galahad,’ he said, making his point by taking rather too long to position the next stone.

  ‘But how can we be sure where that place is, Father?’ I asked.

  That was when Father Folant shouted in alarm, dropping the firewood which he’d been carrying to the warming-house and pointing to the apple orchard at the foot of the slope. Iselle was running among the trees, her bow in one hand and a brace of ducks strung by the neck in the other.

  ‘Fetch the others,’ Judoc barked at Dristan, who ran off towards the buildings.

  ‘What’s happening?’ Gawain roared, striding through the rain, throwing his cloak around his shoulders. His men came in his wake and together we watched Iselle hare up the hill towards us, her tresses thrown back from her pale face, whipping like flame.

  Somewhere, one of the monks was sounding the hand bell, its hollow, metallic beat as fast as a terrified heart.

  ‘Shields,’ Gawain called, and Hanguis and Endalan turned and hurried back to the warming-room as Iselle reached us, dropping the bow and her kill and bending to suck in breath as she turned her flushed face up to meet Gawain’s eyes.

  ‘They’re here,’ she said.

  ‘Here? On the island?’ Father Judoc asked, caught between disbelief and fear. The brothers had gathered behind us, their wide eyes scouring the tree line, hands busy signing the Thorn, lips moving in prayer. Phelan still beating the bell, his face red with the effort.

  ‘How many?’ Gawain asked, in no doubt that here meant here.

  ‘A dozen,’ Iselle said. ‘Spearmen. No lords or men with iron coats that I saw. But they saw your boat.’ She picked up her bow and the ducks and straightened. ‘They’re coming.’

  Gawain nodded, watching the trees below. ‘We’re leaving.’

  ‘How?’ Gediens asked.

  Gawain grimaced at the thought of having to fight his way through the Saxons to get to their boat.

  ‘There is another way,’ Father Brice said. He stood at my shoulder and I saw that he held my knapsack, which I had left on my bed in the dormitory. ‘There is a way through the caves beneath the tor,’ he said.

  ‘If it is not flooded.’ Father Padern was eyeing the grey sky from beneath whiskery white brows.

  Gawain turned to Father Brice. ‘You’ll come with us?’ he asked.

  The monk shook his head. ‘Our place is here.’ He looked at Father Judoc, who nodded and turned his face to the iron-grey, rain-veiled west. Towards the Thorn.

  ‘But we will show you the way,’ Judoc told Gawain.

  ‘Galahad.’ Father Brice handed me my knapsack. ‘Go with Lord Gawain.’

  I took a step back, pulling my hands away as if from fire. ‘No, Father.’ I tried to match the cold sharpness in his eyes with flint of my own. For in that moment I knew that I should stay with the brothers. That to do anything else was to forsake them, which only a feckless coward would do. It was clear now. The most luminous truth on the bleakest of days. ‘I will stay, Father,’ I said.

  Gawain thrust his big spear into the earth, turned and grabbed a fistful of my habit. ‘You will not,’ he said. ‘If I have to knock you onto your arse, sling you over my shoulder and carry you off, you’re leaving this place with me.’

  I threw up an arm, knocking the warrior’s hand away, and glared at him, hating him then. Who was he to decide? This man whom I did not know. Whom I had not seen for ten years.

  His eyes were fire now. ‘I did not leave you here that day so that you could die like a lamb on some Saxon’s blade.’

  ‘Go with them, my son.’ Father Brice offered me my knapsack again.

  ‘Here they come!’ Gediens called.

  The Saxon spearmen had cleared the apple trees now and arrayed themselves in a line at the foot of the slope, shields raised as they eyed us, appraising our strength.

  ‘You’ll find no silver here!’ Father Padern yelled down at them, his thin voice sluiced away by the wind and rain. ‘Be gone, heathens! There is nothing for you here!’

  I doubted the Saxons would understand what he was saying, though his words seemed to give them pause. Perhaps they thought the Brothers of the Thorn were druids. Perhaps they feared old Padern was cursing them with spells.

  ‘Go, Galahad,’ Father Brice said, then nodded at someone over my shoulder. I turned to see Father Yvain, a spear in his hand, a bear skin around his shoulders and an old, dented iron helmet on his head.

  ‘I’ll show you the way,’ Father Yvain told Gawain.

  ‘They’re coming,’ Father Judoc said. The Saxons were advancing up the rise, chanting some war song in low voices. ‘Go, now.’

  Iselle came from the warming-house, her bow in her hand, the bag of arrows and the brace of ducks tied to her belt, and the Saxon sword strapped onto her back.

  ‘You would leave the brothers to be slaughtered, Lord Gawain, son of King Lot of Lyonesse?’ I asked, speaking his bloodline to shame him.

  ‘They choose to stay,’ Gawain said. ‘We have other fights.’ He gestured with his spear at the humble buildings of the monastery. ‘We have more to lose than this.’

  Father Brice reached up and put the knapsack over my shoulder. Then he took my hands in his own. ‘You are our future, Galahad,’ he said. ‘So long as you live, there is hope.’ Tears came to my eyes then, hot and angry and tasting of the past.

  I could hear the Saxons’ words now. They were invoking their gods: Woden, Thunor and Tiw. I caught their animal stink on the wind. I heard the whip of Iselle’s bow and the thunk of the arrow embedding in a shield.

  ‘There are more coming from the trees,’ Endalan warned.

  Hanguis shook his head and spat a curse.

  ‘Go, Galahad,’ Father Judoc said.

  ‘Go or stay, it matters not,’ Father Folant added, and with that he set off walking down the hill towards the Saxons, who were just a spear-throw away now. None of the monks tried to stop their brother, and as Father Brice and Father Yvain entreated me to go, their voices lost in a swirling, dizzying daze which overcame me like a fog, I saw a Saxon plunge his spear into Father Folant’s belly. Saw the bearded, snarling Saxon stamping his foot down onto the monk, trying to haul the blade from the flesh and the snag of Folant’s woollen gown.

  I saw Father Padern walk forward, towards the spearmen, his fingers intertwined in the sign of the Thorn. Father Meurig and Father Phelan followed, their own hands clasped in the same gesture of defiance and invocation, as though the sign itself might turn aside blades and hatred and heathen ignorance.

  ‘We shall join the saint,’ Father Padern yelled, his voice stronger than I had ever heard it. ‘Come, Brothers! Come now!’ That voice cut through the fog and pierced me. ‘Be not afraid,’ he commanded. I saw the spear blade, a silver leaf flashing in the grey. Saw the bright blood fly, stark and shocking. Too bright for an old man’s blood.

  A Saxon came on ahead of his spear-brothers. Eager to prove himself. Hanguis strode out to meet him, taking the man’s spear thrust on his shield and turning it aside, then launching himself forward and driving his sword into the man’s guts. He twisted the blade and hauled it out, then raised his shield and walked backwards with even, unhurried steps.

  Iselle ran back past the unfinished sheep pen towards the buildings, and I thought sh
e was fleeing but then she stopped by the wood pile, turned and watched, holding her bow low across herself, an arrow nocked on the string.

  Something struck me and I stumbled and almost fell. It was Father Brice. ‘In the name of the Thorn, go!’ he screamed at me, a fury in his face which I did not recognize in him. ‘Go or be damned!’

  I watched Father Phelan’s severed head tumble to the ground and his legs give way.

  Another shove, from Gawain this time, and the next thing I knew I was staggering towards the byre.

  ‘Remember us, Galahad!’ Father Brice called after me. ‘Remember us!’

  ‘Move, lad,’ Gawain growled, pushing the shaft of his spear against my back, so that the raw lesions beneath my habit bit into my flesh all over again. I saw Iselle take the arrow from the bow string and plunge it into the bag, then she turned and was running, and I was running too, gasping and sick in my stomach and needing to vomit.

  I did not look back. I heard appalling shrieks of pain and strangled gurgles. I heard men bellow, ‘Woden. Woden. Woden.’

  But I did not look back.

  We followed the narrow track up the south-west side of the tor, along the whale-backed ridge. Rising into the grey. Swathing ourselves in a shroud of unnatural dusk.

  ‘They chose their end,’ Gawain muttered through laboured breaths, convincing himself rather than me, it seemed. This famed warrior, this lord of war who had fought beside Lord Arthur and who had just turned his back on his enemy, leaving peaceful men to be slaughtered.

  Up into the cold rain. Seven souls dissolving from the world, the clink and clatter of the warriors’ war gear and our ragged breathing all faint, faraway sounds to me. I stumbled off the path into the wet grass, fell to my knees and vomited. The liquid steamed and stank, and I retched in stomach-clenching agony, my throat burning.

  ‘We left them to die.’ I spat bitter strings of saliva. Dragged a sleeve across my mouth. ‘We left them to be hacked apart,’ I said, louder this time. Full of hatred and shame. Full of fear.

  ‘And we’ll be next, lad. Is that what you want?’ Gawain called from the path. ‘Answer me! You want to stay here and watch your own guts spill onto the grass?’

  In my peripheral vision I saw Father Yvain silence Gawain with a raised hand and the next thing I knew, the monk was behind me and his hand was on my shoulder.

  ‘Up you get, Galahad.’ His voice was low and hoarse. The rasp of a hook tool on an ash bowl. ‘Our brothers knew what they were doing. They fought in their own way. They defied those Saxon dogs with their last breaths. No man can do more when it’s his time.’ His strong fingers burrowed into my flesh. ‘But now is not our time, lad. We have to go. We must get away from here while we can.’

  I spat the foul taste away and stood, my legs unsteady, my stomach squeezing into itself like an empty purse being drawn by the string. I turned back and my eyes found Iselle, but she looked away into the gloom.

  She detests me, I thought. Or worse, pities me.

  ‘We could have fought them,’ I said, but I knew my words were hollow. Thin as the tawny smoke hanging above the hill fort of Camelot to the south-east. Who was I trying to fool?

  Still, Gawain nodded, his eyes dark and unreadable beneath his helmet’s rim. ‘We’ll get our chance, lad,’ he said. ‘Today we live. Tomorrow we fight.’

  I kept up the pretence, tightening my jaw and nodding curtly, as if grudgingly accepting some painful compromise.

  ‘Come, Galahad.’ Yvain beckoned me. ‘To stay here is to die.’

  I believed myself a coward for leaving, but I did not want to die on that hillside in the rain, and the next thing I knew I was reeling along the ridge again, Father Yvain leading us as before, his bear fur giving him the look of some shambling beast fleeing a hunting party. And soon after, when we had gone thirty or so paces past the great egg-stone beside the trail, he stopped and pointed his spear into the grey.

  ‘Here. This is it, I think.’

  ‘Here? I see nothing,’ Hanguis said.

  All I saw was the tufted grass and, here and there, piles of days-old sheep droppings glistening in the rain. But Yvain was already stalking across the slope and so we followed him, as unseen crows cawed, and I looked up to see a blur of lapwings belting over the tor, their shrill peewit notes sounding like a warning that we must hurry.

  ‘Aye, this is it,’ Yvain muttered under his breath, standing beside a single small boulder which was mostly hidden by the grass. The rest of us stood on the slope behind him, but for Iselle, who was a little way off, looking back along the track for sign of the Saxons.

  ‘This some Christ magic?’ Gawain asked, eyeing Yvain with suspicion. Hanguis and Endalan touched the iron of their shield bosses. Gediens spat into the wet grass. They seemed nervous, these once-famed warriors, their heads turning this way and that, as if they expected some strange fog to sweep down from the tor and carry them off. I made the sign of the Thorn.

  Then Yvain thrust his spear into the earth.

  The big man pulled the blade free then rammed it home again and this time the earth seemed to give way, the spear burying itself up to Yvain’s leading hand, halfway along the shaft.

  ‘What, in the name of Taranis?’ Endalan said, scratching his bearded cheek with the leather-bound rim of his shield.

  ‘Are you going to help, or just stand there like trees?’ Father Yvain asked, for he had hauled the spear free again and thrust it back into the same place, twisting and levering to enlarge the hole he had created.

  Gawain laid his shield down, so that rain bounced off the bear painted on it, then thrust his own spear into the earth near Yvain’s hole. A moment later, they were all digging, breaking into the wet soil, stabbing at the tor as men might attack the vulnerable belly of a great dragon. And it became clear that the turf in that place was just a foot deep, like a thin skin over an old wound, and beneath it was a larger hole. With the opening revealed, the men discarded their spears and we fell to our knees, using our hands to pull the soil away, frenzied as dogs digging for bones.

  Iselle had gone back along the trail until I could no longer see her, but now she ran across the slope to us and I knew what she was going to say before I heard the words.

  ‘They’re coming,’ she said.

  Still, the words stabbed into my heart. If the Saxons were on the track, following us up the tor, then it surely meant that their slaughter of the brothers was complete. Father Judoc and Father Brice were dead. The monks of the Thorn martyred in the mud. I imagined their killers stalking into the infirmary, wary of offending our god, perhaps, yet lusting after silver. In my mind I heard them calling to their hateful gods as they speared the Prior in his bed; good, gentle Drustanus hastened to heaven by heathen blades. I imagined his killers running rampant in search of riches which they would never find, our only treasure being the lonely Thorn on its wind-scoured hill.

  We dug. Clawing at the soil, which was warm in my cold hands, with desperate haste now that we knew that the Saxons had not settled on the monastery as a wolf falls to devouring its prey, but were on our heels, thirsting for more blood.

  ‘Nearly there.’ Yvain was blowing hard with the effort, his big, clever hands plunging deeper, tearing the void wider still, and I saw that this opening in the earth was framed with stones. Whether these stones had been placed by human hands or were a natural part of the hill, I did not know, nor did I have the breath to ask as we revealed its extent and sat back on our heels, panting and exchanging questioning looks.

  But it was too late. The Saxons were on the track near the egg-stone. Six of them. Young men by the looks, spear- and shield-armed. Talking in gruff voices amongst themselves as they watched us through the rain, as though trying to understand what we were doing.

  ‘They think we’re burying silver,’ Gediens said.

  Iselle stood on my right, her bow raised towards our enemies, an arrow on the string.

  ‘Go,’ Hanguis told Gawain, as we stood, the warriors wiping their
muddy hands on the grass before gathering up their shields and spears.

  Endalan nodded. ‘We’ll hold them.’

  Gawain looked at the Saxons, his eyes aflame in the wet day, and I knew then that he hungered to fight them. To reap their lives as he had cut down so many of their brothers and fathers over the years. But he knew that he could not.

  ‘Buy us a little time,’ he told Hanguis and Endalan. ‘Then follow.’

  The two warriors nodded grimly, and Gawain gripped hands with each in turn, as did Gediens, the four warriors sharing a look which held within it years and brotherhood and an understanding which needed no further words. Then Hanguis and Endalan lifted their spears, hefted their shields and strode towards the Saxons, who levelled their own spears and came on, perhaps wary of the men in their fine war gear, yet eager to kill and strip them of it.

  Father Yvain crouched low, poking his spear into the darkness of the hole. ‘I’ll go first in case the devils are waiting for us at the end,’ he said. ‘Then the girl, then you, Galahad.’

  I nodded, and Father Yvain burrowed into the tor. I turned back to see Hanguis and Endalan clash with the Saxons, their scale armour and grey helmets glinting dully in the dying day. They cut and moved, thrust and leapt back, and I saw a Saxon go down. Saw another reel back in a spray of crimson, and heard Hanguis or Endalan, I could not say which, roaring the name Arthur as he killed.

  ‘In you go, lad,’ Gawain said. I crouched, seeing Iselle disappear into that strange and ancient darkness. A flash of pale skin and dark copper hair and she was gone. I put my head inside and smelled the loamy, wet earth, then crawled right in on my hands and knees. It was warm in there, out of the wind and rain, and the world I had left was suddenly distant and muted. I could not hear the fighting but somehow I knew that Hanguis and Endalan would still be on their feet, dealing death. Men such as they, long in war, lords of battle, would exact a terrible price from lesser warriors such as those Saxon spearmen who boasted neither iron helmets nor mail tunics.