Chapter 3
Three
Some nights I snuck down to the beach and stared up at the stars. Their sharp light filled me with a tingling dread.
The greater world, I knew now, was a dangerous place. People beyond our shores were out to get me. Viviana reinforced this belief.
“I should not have let you talk to that Galehaut boy,” she said. “If you had stayed by my side in Sorelois, you would have been safe.”
I did not blame Galehaut. But I did begin to question my own courage. In the face of an attack I had frozen up, needed rescue. I worried I lacked the mettle of a knight, and Viviana seemed to agree.
Days came and went and I did not begin my training. Instead I continued with my chores and studies. I milked the goats. I scoured pans. I reread Plato, Ovid and Herodotus and felt the uncertainty of my life acutely.
“What is my purpose here?” I asked Viviana. “Where am I from originally? Why did you save me?”
Time and again, I received the same response. “Trust the sisterhood, little one. This knowledge is not yet yours to possess.”
But the not knowing made my skin go cold. The not knowing frightened me. I worried if I didn’t find out, I might one day lose my mind.
When, on rare occasion, other men came to the island, I hid in the shadows, occupying myself with the mending or milking, preferring not to be seen.
Some came on passing ships, looking for goods or trade.
Others were relatives of the descendants.
The island’s magic seemed to ward off those with ill intentions.
I had no reason to be so aloof. But while these men stayed in the beach huts, I found excuses to head into the woods or to the island’s high meadows, off to forage for berries or set hunting traps—activities permitted by the sisterhood.
I was safe there, I reminded myself. I could stop looking over my shoulder.
But the seeds of my paranoia had already been planted.
I was a ghost, prowling between two worlds, belonging nowhere.
The forest must have sensed my desperation. I was practicing archery one day, when a gorse shrub stirred at the edge of the clearing.
The fox took a few tentative steps into the grass and shook himself off. A long time had passed since our last encounter, but I recognized his right paw—a shock of white. I rummaged around my pocket for a leftover date.
“Come have it,” I whispered, extending my palm.
He paced closer, digging his claws into the earth, pinning me back with his bright gold eyes. I lowered my hand to his level.
“I won’t hurt you,” I promised, “if you won’t hurt me.”
Up close I could see the quiver of his whiskers, the pink spoon of his tongue. His breath felt warm and wet on my hand. When he yawned, revealing sharp teeth, I reared back. But then, with the gentlest of mouths, he removed the date from my palm. And then he darted back the way he came.
I took the encounter as a portent. Perhaps the island was listening. I coveted wild things, craved the right to rove and explore. After much beseeching, Viviana agreed to loosen the rules, giving me free rein of the island, even after sunset.
“Just don’t tell the sisterhood,” she said.
And so I lowered myself into hidden grottos and scaled the tallest trees.
I sailed from one goblet-shaped cove to another other.
I carried a pouch with morsels for the fox, who took to shadowing me.
Yet even as I was making new discoveries, the island still seemed reluctant to reveal its best secrets.
The goddess Danu would never appear to me, and I would never learn Viviana’s magic.
I was caged from the outside world, but walled off from the center.
Sometimes, the mere act of existing felt like rough wool against my skin.
Such were my turbulent thoughts one afternoon when I swam out past the waves. The tension had reached a breaking point. I pulled myself down to the ocean floor, past the depth where my ears popped. Then I held my breath.
I was an estranged, pathetic creature. My loneliness was crushing, and I was too afraid to keep living. I promised myself that no matter how much I wanted to, no matter how badly it hurt, I would not come up for air.
I kept hoping, as my lungs tightened, that I’d reach a place beyond the pain. But of course no such place existed, and my body refused to comply. Eventually the pressure became too much and I broke to the surface.
I could not, I had learned, escape myself.
Neither land nor sea offered any relief.
Instead I retreated into my studies, the page my last true respite.
The library was crowded with poems, histories, herbals and leechbooks.
I was permitted to read anything I desired, even the delicate scrolls in the cabinet drawer, which I regarded with the same reverence as unhatched eggs.
As I unfurled their ancient vellum, breathing in the animal scent of their pages, I read of healing stones, Aquilo winds, earthquakes and chess.
I read of lands covered in snow, and whole cities absorbed by the sea.
In the past I’d also loved the heroic poems, the stories of knights and the dragons they slew.
Those rare creatures, like many others from the ancient world, were slowly fading into legend.
From a high shelf I removed what was once my favorite codex.
A History of Camelot.
I’d read this book more than any other, hovering my fingers over its gold-leaf illuminations.
Camelot, the greatest city this side of Rome.
Ruled by Arthur Pendragon and Queen Guinevere, presided over by an ever-expanding Round Table of knights.
As a younger boy, Viviana had read me these stories, unfurling Camelot’s spellbinding history.
The Round Table had been established under Arthur’s father, Uther, to solidify alliances against a rising threat from Rome.
“They used to pray to many gods in Rome,” Viviana had explained. “But now they pray to one. Some believe that the old ways like ours are evil.”
“Are they?” I had asked.
Viviana laughed. “Our traditions are beautiful and good. We see the divine in all things, you know this, little one.” She was sitting on the edge of my bed and placed the book on the stand. “But there is beauty in the new ways, too. We are not against them. Yet some people seek to divide us.”
“Why?”
“Power. Legacy. Land. Silver. Boring things.”
“Does Camelot practice the old ways or the new?”
“Both.”
“But how?”
“One day you’ll see.”
One day you’ll see. I remember this vividly. Viviana believed I might one day know Camelot.
“Have you been there?” I had asked. “To Camelot?”
“Yes.”
“Who is your favorite knight?”
Viviana smirked. “There are so many. Two generations. Older knights like Hoel and Pellinore who came up under Uther Pendragon. And a younger generation, younger even than Arthur, like Percival and Yvain and Gareth and Gawain. But I am closest, I suppose, with Arthur himself.”
“You know King Arthur!”
She pressed her fingers to her mouth, eyes glinting with mischief.
I sat up straight, craving to know more, but I sensed we were dancing on a cliff’s edge.
There were topics I knew I could not broach with the sisterhood.
Conversations around lineage and past relationships that were met with stony dismissal, even from Viviana. But I pressed her.
“You must tell me of him!” I said. “You must tell me of Arthur!”
“Well…” She looked to the window, a frame of distant waves, measuring her words. “He is a good man. Young in relation to the power he wields. He… he has gray eyes.”
“Gray eyes?”
She nodded.
“I must know more!”
“Everything you might want to know is in the book. Our codex is very current.”
“But…” I sensed an opening and didn’t want to miss it. “When were you last with him? How often do you go to Camelot? Can I come with you next time?”
“You are very inquisitive tonight, sweet boy. These will be the last questions I answer. Then it is time for bed.” She waited for me to nod in acceptance and then continued.
“I have not been to Camelot in a very long time. Not since before you came to us, and even then, I did not go very often at all. I was last there for Arthur and Guinevere’s wedding.
It was a marvelous banquet, filled with music and dances and all sorts of delicious desserts.
I hope you dream of a great feast tonight. ”
She blew out my candle and was making for the door when I called to her. She had not answered my last question, the most important one. Could I go, too?
“With the sisterhood’s blessing,” she had said, “perhaps.”
I slammed A History of Camelot shut. A distant world out of reach. Without proper training, I would never become a knight, never know worlds like the Round Table. I felt hot with self-loathing, just as I had the day the mirror boy’s pool went dry.
I was already behind my peers, at least the single one I’d met. I could see Galehaut so clearly—the thin veins of his hand, the particular swoop of his hair, the tidy way he wrapped his mother’s shield in oilcloth. He was a squire. Probably a knight by now. My own dream was slipping away.
I returned the book to its proper shelf and looked for another to distract me. Homer. Pliny. Apollodorus. I opened the drawer of scrolls and idly sifted through them. Most were written in languages I could not comprehend, some in alphabets I could not even identify.
But wait. Amid the familiar rolls of parchment lay a palm-sized book. The black leather cover was adorned with a single green jewel.
I thought I knew every inch of the library, so it was a surprise to encounter a book I’d never seen before. Eagerly, I flipped it open. There was a rushed quality to the writing, the letters cramming the parchment and sliding sideways. I squinted to make out the words.
A lion of silver will attack a prince of brass.
A knight will be struck speechless by a child in the womb.
A king will be crowned at an eagle’s summit.