By Force Alone

by Lavie Tidhar

  The missionaries are making a run for it, it seems. They pick no sides beyond that of the winner. Their gospel, born in hot Judea, tempered in the blood of Rome, is ready like a blade to pierce the hearts of infidels on this remote, cold island.

  Black clouds amass on the horizon.

  It will rain.

  It always rains, in this God-forsaken land.

  *

  ‘Will he come?’

  ‘Will he come?’

  In the rooms the women come and go. Edith holds a scented handkerchief to her face. She stands by the window, looking at the men passing on the street below. Already some of the women speak of following the troops. The men will need company, and what need do tomorrow’s dead have for today’s coin? There is money to be made on the battlefield. Already in the courtyard the mules and wagons are assembled and the women pack all that is needed: tents and pillows, curtains and Greek ticklers, Roman candles and nightcaps and sheaths, oils and perfumes.

  ‘Will he come?’

  But Edith has made other plans, and now this king’s war for the soul of the nation has ruined them. Will he come, already? She breathes in the scent of crushed roses. The knights in their passing raise a vast cloud of dust. The sun’s hidden behind the clouds, and it’s cold. She shivers in her gown.

  Then he’s there – ‘Edith!’

  ‘Bedivere!’

  He grins and lifts her in a crushing hug. Oh, he does love her, he does, he does! She covers his face with kisses.

  ‘I cannot tarry long. We ship today, to Camlann.’

  ‘Camlann,’ she says, ‘Camlann, where the fuck is Camlann!’

  He cups her breast. His breathing comes faster then.

  ‘I do not know, nor care,’ he says.

  ‘Oh, Bedivere! Let’s run away together! Forget this war! I see nothing but death foretold.’

  He pulls her closer. He’s so hard, so desperate. She responds to the heat of his body. He pulls off her shift and she pulls him out. He’s so stiff. He cries out when she touches him.

  ‘I can’t,’ he says. ‘But you will see, we’ll come back covered in glory.’

  He enters her. She runs her fingers in his short-cropped hair. He’s fast, relentless.

  Scared, she thinks.

  Yet it excites her, too.

  ‘…Don’t go.’

  ‘I must.’

  He’s already buckling on his sword again. The army marches outside.

  ‘I’ll never see you again,’ she says.

  He gives her a kiss on the cheek, strangely chaste.

  ‘I’ll come back and buy you from the house and we shall live like man and wife and make a family.’

  ‘I want a little boy,’ she says. ‘I’ll name him Arthur, after the king.’

  ‘You will have all you want and more,’ he tells her. ‘Servants so you’d never have to lift a finger. Cooks and gardeners and nannies for the children. We’ll live upriver in a mansion outside Londinium, and piss downstream.’

  She cries in his arms. He is so hard and so young and so untampered. A blade is not a blade if it’s not used to kill. A sword’s no good for chopping up cucumbers.

  ‘…Goodbye.’

  He leaves her. She looks out the window, trying to pick him among the throng. But all the soldiers look the same, and the dust of the road swallows them until they’re gone.

  *

  But always there are those for whom the great event simply doesn’t matter, who are playing Roman ball and ghost in the graveyard on the edge of town, in a muddy field.

  ‘Look at them all,’ Little Bevan says, and he spits on the ground. ‘All going to war, like. They say this Mordred’s a demon with black ichor in his veins.’

  ‘Never!’ Crazy-Eye Arty says. He kicks the ball and it bounces off the ash tree and hits Chicken-Feet Calum in the face.

  Everyone laughs.

  ‘I heard he eats the hearts of little babies!’

  ‘Shut up, that ain’t true!’

  ‘I don’t think anything’s gonna happen,’ Gildas says. He’s a little bigger than the other boys. ‘I think there is no enemy. My daddy says—’

  ‘Your daddy’s a deserter!’

  They all laugh and Gildas’s face turns red. He chases Little Bevan round the field but Little Bevan can move fast when he wants to.

  ‘Your mummy smells!’

  ‘Take that back!’

  ‘You take it back!’

  Finally cornered, Little Bevan squares up to Gildas. They start punching each other in the dust as the other children cheer them on.

  Along the road, oblivious, the soldiers march on and on.

  *

  ‘Tell them…’ the boy says, and then he looks uncertain. The old letter-writer working on the steps of the forum as he has for years looks up at him with eyes that have seen everything already. ‘Tell them… You take dictation, right?’

  ‘I do.’

  ‘You just write whatever I say?’

  ‘That’s how it works.’

  ‘But I don’t know what to say to them.’

  ‘Your ma and da?’

  ‘And young Elsbeth, what thinks I’m lord and master of Camelot.’ The boy smiles fondly.

  ‘Girlfriend?’

  ‘My sister.’

  ‘Ah.’

  ‘Tell them…’ The boy stares. ‘Tell them we’re shipping out today, to war. Tell them we’re going to a place called Camlann. I don’t know what it’s like, there. The king says it will all be over as soon as it’s begun. A new day for Britain. A new dawn. Tell them… We are resolute of spirit and ready for battle. No. I don’t know.’

  ‘It’s alright,’ the old letter-writer says gently.

  ‘Just tell them I love them.’

  The old man writes. The young man pays him his coin.

  Then he, too, is gone, to join his comrades on the long march to their war.

  *

  But for many, life must carry on as normal:

  ‘But this is not what I ordered.’

  ‘This is the suit.’

  ‘But I asked for the forest green. This is spring green.’

  ‘Sir, the pigment we use is exactly as the sample you picked.’

  ‘This is not what I ordered. And also it does not fit neatly round the stomach.’

  ‘Sir, the measurements were quite precise at the time of their taking—’

  ‘Are you saying I gained weight?’

  ‘Sir, I am not saying—’

  ‘I demand to speak to the manager.’

  ‘I am the manager, sir.’

  ‘This is unacceptable. I have a function tonight at the Merchants’ Guild. I must look my best!’

  ‘Sir, we can offer a discretionary ten per centum discount, seeing as—’

  ‘Very well. And you can make the adjustments?’

  ‘Right away, sir.’

  ‘Get to it, then, man!’

  ‘Very good, sir.’

  *

  ‘Here comes Papa,’ Deirdre says to the baby in her arms. She rocks it and croons. ‘Here comes Papa now, to say how much he loves you.’

  The tread of footsteps in the yard. Sir Morien, in battle dress. He kneels down, kisses Deirdre on her brow.

  ‘Shh, he’s sleeping.’

  Sir Morien strokes the baby’s head. Can feel the pulsing soft spot on the baby’s skull. How much he loves this little creature. He kisses him, inhales that smell of baby and sweet milk.

  ‘Papa is off to war,’ Deirdre says, and smiles at her baby.

  ‘I wish I didn’t have to go,’ Sir Morien says.

  ‘You’ll make us proud. You serve your king and country. Defend us from the traitor, Mordred, and his rebel kin. It will all be over well before the winter solstice.’

  ‘I hope so,’ Morien says. ‘Can I…?’ he says.

  She gives him the baby, gently. He holds him in his arms.

  ‘Morien,’ he says, marvelling. His son, how is it that he has a son?

  ‘He’ll be a knigh
t like you,’ Deirdre tells him.

  He looks at her – so vibrant with the birth, her skin aglow, her huge brown eyes are so alive. He knows she’s tired, the child has been keeping her up, always hungry the little creature, hungry and strong. They’d lost the previous one, a little girl. They never talk about it. When this one was born healthy they had hugged without words.

  He wishes for his son to grow. To live. He doesn’t wish a soldier’s life upon him. But Deirdre does, she’s always full of stories from the washing yard, of what the queen said today and what the king wore for the parade, and everyone says this Mordred’s but a bastard child with a ragtag group of men – it will all be over well before the solstice. So she says and he loves her too much to disagree. He hugs the baby to his chest and wishes time would stop but it does not. He hands him back. He kisses Deirdre. And then he leaves them, and there is only the tread of his boots on the muddy ground, the tread of his boots on the muddy ground until the sound fades away and is gone.

  *

  The giant, Maelor Gawr, catches up with her by the stables.

  ‘My lady queen,’ he says.

  She’s busy saddling the horse. He notes she’s back to her old outfit. Her hair’s cropped short and she’s wearing dagger and sword. She whistles ‘Let All Mortal Flesh Keep Silence’, but stops when she sees him.

  ‘My Lady Guinevere, I cannot let you—’

  ‘Fuck off, Gawr,’ she says shortly.

  ‘My Queen, you cannot ride to join him in the battle!’

  She stops, startled, and actually laughs.

  ‘You think I am going to him?’

  The giant looks confusedly at her. ‘But where else—’

  ‘You fucking giant fool. I’ve had it with this crap. Shitting Arthur, boys and their wars. This was only ever a temporary arrangement.’

  ‘My Queen! You married him!’

  ‘Are you really this naïve, or merely stupid?’

  The giant rumbles. Guinevere ignores him and mounts her horse.

  ‘I’ll go to Europe, maybe,’ she says. ‘They have plenty of riches to plunder. All a story needs is a woman and a sword.’

  ‘My Lady Guinevere?’

  ‘Fuck off,’ she says; not unkindly. Then she spurs the horse and, before the giant knows it, she’s gone for good.

  *

  In a copse of trees outside the city, three of the Ladies of Water stand beside the bubbling cauldron.

  ‘When shall we three meet again, in thunder, lightning or in – oh, fuck, it’s raining.’

  ‘It always rains, dear Cailleach,’ says Thitis sweetly.

  The Queen of Winter turns an icy gaze on her. ‘Oh, fuck off,’ she says.

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Ladies, ladies!’ Morgan says. She stirs the water in the cauldron. The reflection of the dull skies and grey clouds shifts and changes when the raindrops hit the surface. An image forms: black hills, a distant shore, a wide plain shorn of grass. It might have been one of those places that the Romans mined for silver, back when there was still a Rome to matter to anyone here. An industrial landscape, blasted and gouged and bleak.

  It will do, she thinks. It is as fine a place for men to die as anywhere.

  ‘When the hurly-burly’s done,’ she says softly. ‘When the battle’s lost and won.’

  ‘But lost and won by who?’ says Thitis.

  Cailleach stirs from her pondering. ‘I am sure you have your favourites, dear Thitis.’

  ‘As do you.’

  ‘I care not for either. My Picts will hold the Romans’ wall against whoever wins. My white-skinned devils care not for British Celts nor the Germanic Saxons.’

  ‘Your Picts are hooligans who think meat pudding’s a gastronomic miracle.’

  ‘Fuck you.’

  ‘Fuck you!’

  ‘Ladies, please,’ says Morgan. She stirs the cauldron. The water shimmers. The sea is not far from the plains. The mermaids sing beneath the waves. She sees white sails and dark clouds, a storm on the horizon. Sea spray and crying birds, and a single boat, sailing on the sea towards a distant shore.

  An islet illuminated in searing white light like a beacon.

  A premonition. She stirs the pot and the water turn to dull reflection. The rain falls down. She knows the ground will soon turn into mud. The knights will spend a miserable first night on the road.

  ‘I’ll see you later,’ she says.

  ‘Not if we see you first, Morgan.’

  ‘Whatever.’

  She turns into a raven and flies away. Thitis slinks into the distance, a cat: Graymalkin. The Queen of Winter summons fog. She drifts away, a cloud.

  The cat will feed tonight on soldiers’ scraps. The fog will cling to their clothes and dampen their spirits, and hide the world from their sight. And as for Morgan…

  Morgan has business elsewhere.

  69

  The torches burn over Dinas Emrys. They burn over Londinium. They burn over Tintagel.

  And in their light the soldiers march.

  They march away from hearth and home. They do not know what’s waiting there, at Camlann. But they go all the same, for king and country, to give their blood for this land.

  Merlin watches them all. And he wonders what it is about mortals, who are so ready to die. For what is land? he thinks. It isn’t for a people. It can’t be owned. Land knows no fealty. It was there before people ever trod upon it, and it will be there long after they’re gone. In time even the memories of these marching ghosts will fade. The Earth will turn and turn. The sun will grow dim, burn red – in time even the sun will fade.

  All people are is the dust of old stars.

  Yet here they are nevertheless, these conscious beings of reconstituted matter. Marching blithely along, ready to die for an idea that makes no sense if you stare at it head on. This island’s just a piece of Europe with the land bridge submerged, just another clump of dirt in the middle of an ocean, on a world that spins through space, in a universe older and weirder than anything even a Merlin can imagine.

  Why would you die for this? he wonders. Would it not be better to simply live?

  But he has learned such questions have no answers a Merlin, with his mere logic, can answer. And so he watches the soldiers march to Camlann.

  It doesn’t really matter, he thinks, this matter of Britain.

  Just another way to pass the time.

  *

  ‘Da? Da, it’s me.’

  Bors the Younger stoops by the bed. The window’s open. He can smell roses in bloom, and the rain.

  ‘Da, you should see them go. Perfect formation. Roman legion standard. Drilled and trained, full kitted. Swords polished and sharp. Shields clean and oiled. Oh, Da, they look glorious! If only you could see them now, just how you trained them all these years.’

  But Bors the Elder doesn’t speak. Bors the Elder doesn’t stir from his bed. How small he seems. How thin. His eyes are milky-white and blind. And Bors the Younger takes his father’s hand in his and feels how fragile the bones have become. How cold the old man feels. And he tucks the furs tight around his father’s body.

  ‘Oh, Da!’

  The nightjars call outside. The rain patters gently on the rose bushes. Bors the Younger shakes his head, perhaps to clear it. When do our parents become our children, he thinks. And he stokes the fire to drive away the chill in the room, and he sits by his father’s bedside, and he talks late into the night, telling him fairy-tales: of fabulous battles and glory and blood, of chivalry and wild romance.

  *

  ‘I got a bad feeling about this one, Lucan. If our guts don’t spill in that bullshit valley, first thing when we get back to Londinium I’m paying my two denarii so that Brastius here can dip his wick in the inkwell of an Aldgate tart.’

  The men laugh.

  ‘Brastius here’s gonna die a virgin, boss. Chances are he’ll have his guts splayed in the dirt before some fisherman’s feet ’fore he ever gets to bite the fruit on that tree of knowledge.�
�

  They huddle round the small fire. All about them, extending to the horizon, are encampments, men and tents, equipment, livestock, carts and campfires. Brastius takes the ribbing with a smile. These men are his best friends. He’ll die for them just as they would die for him.

  ‘You ever finger a holy grail, Brastius?’

  The men laugh. Brastius wraps the greased leather coat over himself. He stares into the flames.

  ‘When do we get there?’ he says quietly.

  ‘A few more days of marching, I reckon.’

  ‘A few more days…’

  ‘Play us a song, Lucan. You’re good with the harp. Something cheery and bawdy.’

  ‘You know “There Once Was A Girl From Dubris”?’

  He strums the strings of the harp. His voice is lovely there, under the stars. The soldiers quieten down as Lucan sings. They laugh when he mentions the girl’s golden fleece, and roar when he gets to her altarpiece. Other soldiers, round other fires, join in, and the tune spreads, across the length of the camp, until it seems to envelope the entire world.

  *

  ‘What are they doing now?’ Kay complains. He turns to Agravain. ‘I do wish Galahad was here. He was always good with the logistics.’

  ‘Galahad was a shit.’

  ‘Galahad was a useful shit. Which is more than I can say for you.’

  Kay rubs his temples. This is a nightmare, he thinks. He is against this march, this battle Arthur’s so bloody keen on. The administration of this march alone is making his ulcer worse. Supply lines and road maintenance and setting up camp and feeding the troops, and trying to maintain some sort of latrines in a field situation… This is the problem with kings, he thinks, equal parts fond of Arthur and exasperated. They don’t think of the implications! To go to war, someone has to hire cooks! Maintain discipline, make sure the roads are clear after the rains, ensure provisions, medical supplies, lines of communication—

  Arthur thinks it’s just like in the old days, when they were boys, when all you needed for a fight was a knife and a yard, and somewhere to stash the bodies after.

  Fuck this, he thinks. He’s too old for war. All he wants to do is be back home at the Gilded Cage, where you can never tell if it is night or day, and there is always music…