Chapter 10
Ten
To the extent that I could, I became small.
Viviana took us hunting and showed us how to fashion effective traps.
Elinor gave us fiddle lessons. We spent silent hours in the library studying histories and mathematics—side by side but not together.
In the downtime between our training, Galehaut went to my room and closed the door.
Under Bagotta’s instruction we built a tiltyard in the meadow and practiced riding in armor.
Blake proved a steady steed, yet my performance was abysmal.
Galehaut had been riding for years, but I was clumsy under the chain mail’s interlocking weight.
I wobbled and veered, falling more than once.
I breathed through the tension using Bagotta’s technique.
“How do you expect to fight if you can barely ride in armor?” Galehaut asked when Bagotta was out of earshot.
“I will learn,” was all I could say.
He mumbled something to himself, no doubt some disparaging remark.
The chain mail had left an imprint of sweat on his padded tunic.
He took off the garment and wiped the slickness from his chest. His muscles were carved stone, but he seemed to take no pride in them.
I wondered, for a moment, if he was self-conscious of his physicality.
Afterwards, as we polished our armor, Galehaut plucked the rag from my hands.
“Softer,” he said. “Like this. Otherwise you’ll scratch the metal.”
I watched his fingers tracing neat circles. Noted the concentration in his chestnut eyes. He dipped the cloth in polish—a slurry of ash and sand—and waited until it stopped dripping. I watched and wondered. Wondered and watched.
The next week, Viviana led us to a remote cluster of beach rock, where our lessons in the sea were set to begin.
“Shall we start with swimming, Viviana?” Galehaut asked. “Or will you show us your sailing tricks first?”
A guilty smile curled her lips. “I won’t be your sea instructor.”
I was about to ask Who will? when a backwash of mermen spouted out of the water, splashing the rocks with seafoam.
“Merrow!” I gasped, their low-tide scent invading my nostrils.
“We made arrangements with their king,” said Viviana. “His name is Lirius, and he will be your instructor.” Noting my horror, she added, “It should be fine.”
I’d heard of mermen smashing boats, biting legs, dragging fishermen to depths that made their lungs implode. But Galehaut was more sanguine.
“I know stories,” he said. “Of mermen training knights. It’s not common, but it’s not unheard of.”
As we navigated the outcrop, I struggled to absorb Galehaut’s measured optimism.
Up close the mermen were even more frightening, with red eyes, fishy mouths and fins that fanned out and flapped involuntarily.
With a signal, Lirius sent the others back into the water.
I noted the shark scars racing up his arms and chest. A conch shell, strung with kelp, hung from his barnacled neck.
“Good luck,” Viviana called, as she turned for home.
I looked to Galehaut for encouragement, but he’d gone still. Lirius flicked a sea speck from his bulging chest.
“We tend to avoid man,” he said, voice wet and gargled. “You are, as a whole, distrustful and greedy. But at least the Isle of Women adheres to the old ways.”
He scooped up a cluster of snails and hermit crabs and began to snack on them.
“That rock.” He nodded to a sea stone fifty yards out. “Swim to it.”
We stripped to our linens and dove in. The frigid water was a shock, and the waves were big, but I cut through them without issue.
It was when a merman’s tail grazed my toes that I lost my rhythm.
I could feel a group of them swishing beneath us, displacing the water and pulling at my feet.
With each stroke, I envisioned one of them biting me, pulling me under.
We cut through the swells in long, fear-tinged strokes, swimming there and back.
Galehaut pulled himself onto a rock. On a horse I could not keep up with him, but in the water I was a better match. I was surprised when he slid over to make room for me.
“Thanks,” I said.
“It’s nothing.”
We sat hunched, breathing heavily, chests rising and falling in unison. We were so close that our thighs were touching. I could feel the stirring of his muscles, note the blue veins of his forearm. I fought the urge to flinch. Galehaut said nothing and did not move.
Lirius was munching on a cluster of mussels. He swirled the water’s surface with the tip of his translucent fin.
“Again,” he said.
We swam back and forth like this many times. A hardened determination rimmed Galehaut’s salt-drenched eyes. Some of the mermen were bobbing in the water, silently judging.
“Enough,” Lirius said, tossing the empty mussel shells over his shoulder. “You may relax now while I tell you about the twelve winds. But tomorrow you will do that swim in chain mail.”
That night I thrashed about on my pallet. I could not sleep. My mind spumed with images of gills and scales and ocean detritus. The merking’s wet voice crackled in my ears.
But at least I could swim, I reminded myself. At least I could show Galehaut I was good at something. I was growing tired of feeling incompetent. The only gaze harsher than his was my own.
Eventually, I flung off the blanket. The moon shone bright. Perhaps this was an opportune moment, when no one was watching, to return to the lake.
The beach huts were dim and quiet, so too were the other cottages. I went to the barn and saddled up Blake. His calm demeanor steadied me, but he must have sensed my restlessness. He cantered swiftly up the switchback trail to the base of the mountain.
At the waterfall, I tethered the horse to a tree and climbed through the cave.
The lake was just as I’d left it—a shimmering cerulean, seemingly lit from within.
I stripped naked and swam to the center.
The water gave like silk. I could see the sword but this time there were no bubbles. Perhaps I had exhausted its memories.
I floated on my back again, taking in the stars. Whereas we humans moved up and down, forward and backward, deviating and digressing in silly little ways, the stars moved in a fixed circular pattern. They were made of ether, an element not found on earth, unquestionably perfect.
We were not made of ether and we were not perfect. We choked down salt water, we fell off horses. We froze up with fear. We broke sacred harps. We were not worthy of the stars, not even their glimmering trails. Yet prophecies were made of us. Swords were forged from our war-torn memories.
The sword, whatever its purpose, rang with ether-laced echoes.
Once again I swam down to it and gripped the hilt.
But this time its light was dimmer and there were no bubbles.
A few panicked seconds passed and nothing happened.
I was nearly out of breath when the cone of light brightened and the bubbles finally burst forth, relaxing my lungs.
Yes, I thought. It was happening again. The sword was confiding in me.
I was standing in some sort of public square.
A profusion of people, crowds like I’d never seen, were bustling between carriages and wagons filled with all manner of goods—wheat, timber, spring onions and slabs of granite.
A stream of finely dressed courtiers flowed towards an arena in the distance.
The grandeur and brightness of this city flooded me with a buoyant energy. I looked up at the castle, awestruck by its crenellated walls and corbels, its silver-roofed outbuildings and armored watchtowers. The keep was so tall it pierced the clouds.
A flag atop the barbican caught my eye and made my heart soar. It depicted a gold dragon against a red backdrop. The crest of the Pendragons.
This was Camelot.
Of course it was.
I’d find such worldly splendor nowhere else.
The vision fixed itself on a boy dressed in squire’s wool. He was gangly and pimpled, with the gait of a foal shaking out its limbs. I watched—with pangs of empathy—as he wove through the masses. He looked agitated, panic-stricken. The crowd seemed irked by his frantic circulations.
He turned and I caught sight of his face. He was around my age, not yet handsome or strong, but his looks suggested those qualities were on the horizon. His gray eyes in particular hinted at a latent wisdom, greatness even.
An epiphany struck like lightning. I was looking at the future king of Camelot. I was looking at a young Arthur Pendragon. Through the lake sword I was a stone’s throw away from the defining hero of my childhood.
“Shit from a bird!” young Arthur cursed under his breath. “Kay will have my neck!”
I was both in his perspective and outside of it, seeing the harried crowd through his eyes yet watching with a foreknowledge begotten from endless readings of A History of Camelot.
I knew this story. I knew what was about to happen.
I knew that Arthur’s mother, Igraine, had died in childbirth and that Merlin had convinced his father, Uther, to place the infant with a family from the countryside.
Far removed from wealth and power, Arthur grew up alongside the family’s only son, Kay.
“Hurry, love,” said a passerby to his wife. “I can hear the bugles. The tournament is about to begin.”
I knew Kay was set to compete in this tournament. I knew that Arthur was Kay’s squire, and in the excitement of the day he’d misplaced Kay’s sword.
I could feel the panic rising in young Arthur’s throat. I went to the silversmith’s to have the hilt adjusted, he thought, as he retraced his steps. And then I took a rest by the bakery… Did I leave the sword by the storefront? Was I that foolish?
When Uther Pendragon died, Merlin created a test. A sword was placed in a stone outside the castle and whoever removed it would be king.
As Arthur bumbled about, oblivious to his fate, his memories began to cascade through me.
I could see his adopted mother kissing his forehead.
I could peer into his quarters, cramped and simple like mine.
I could sweep through the meadow where he played with Kay and splash in the cold river where they loved to swim.
Kay was faster and stronger than Arthur.
Arthur looked up to him. There were flickers of envy, but he refused to ignite them.
Arthur’s inner world, I felt now, was not as volatile as mine.
I could stretch my arms and roam about it.
Arthur, like me, had been raised by a mother who was not his. He did not know his origins (not yet), but this did not seem to cause him quite the same anguish. His heart, too, had been sculpted by absence, but he’d learned to appreciate the contours.
A large stone caught his eye in a corner of the square.
Wait, is that a sword? Yes, I can see the pommel. It looks like it’s just sitting there.
Atop the stone rested an anvil through which the sword was embedded. In the distance the bugles sounded again. Arthur let out a whimper.
I’ll just borrow this. I can bring it back as soon as Kay is done. Surely no one will miss it.
He climbed atop the stone and braced his heel against the anvil. As he clutched the hilt, his grip seemed to graft itself over mine.
For one final moment he was a boy with no origins. And then, as the sword clanged from the anvil, he became something else.
I swam back to shore and dried off. My body shook.
This vision, though vivid, felt less charged than the first. Where my mother’s memories were unbridled and rapid, no doubt inflected by the intensity of her final moments, Arthur’s perspective was gentler.
Even in his agitated situation, his mind was a welcoming place.
He approached the world with wonder. He assumed goodness.
Perhaps I had felt this way once, too. Perhaps I could feel it again.
As I saddled up Blake and rode back beneath a crescent moon, an abiding affection for Arthur flowed through me. We were both nameless boys making our way in the world. Maybe one day, if fate would have it, our paths might converge.