Eight

  The Tale of Sir Bedivere, Part III

  All that afternoon, King Arthur and Sir Bedivere followed the Red Knight.

  The chase took them through the forest and out into a strange barren land they’d never seen before, a desert of dead grass and powdery gray sand like ash. They rode through groves of blasted white trees that looked like they’d been murdered by lightning and then had their bleached white skeletons twisted a half turn by some great cruel hand.

  It wasn’t hard to track the knight: his horse left pristine hoofprints in the fine dust, accented with occasional drops of blood from the deer carcass. After a few hours the trail ended at a modest castle built on what was clearly the site of an old hill fort, with a moat and an unusual design: it had four drawbridges and four gates placed at the four compass points.

  In front of each gate a knight with a long-handled ax stood at attention.

  “Decorative,” Arthur remarked. “But tactically unsound.”

  It was already late afternoon, they’d ridden away most of the day, but when Arthur was on an adventure time meant nothing to him. He would’ve ridden all night if that’s what it took. They were in dream time now, the timeless time of adventures, which had a different texture from ordinary time.

  The water in the moat was still and blank, reflecting the blank white sky. A few reeds grew in clumps around the edge, the only living plants they’d seen for miles. The thirsty horses snorted dust out of their nostrils. They didn’t like it here.

  “You know there’s plenty of venison back at Caerleon.”

  “Not the point.” Arthur squinted at the nearest of the ax-knights and frowned. “This is a legal matter. Red deer are royal property.”

  “Well, we’ll fine him stiffly.” Bedivere knew his objections would be ignored, it was part of their game.

  “What shall we call this? The adventure I mean? ‘Of the Red Knight’?”

  “ ‘Of the Four-Gated Castle’?”

  “ ‘Of the Stolen Hind’? I suppose we’ll have to fight one of those axmen. Maybe all four.”

  “I hope it’s just the one,” Bedivere said.

  They left their horses by a dead tree and trudged across the sand toward the castle. As they got closer Bedivere saw that there was something odd about the men guarding the four gates. Their armor was lit from within with a blue light.

  It was blue fire: the knights seemed to be made of it. Tufts of flame poked through the slits in their visors and wherever there was a gap in the plate. The edges of the metal glowed orange where the fire licked it. The dry grass around their feet was burned black in a circle, and the air above their heads rippled.

  “Look at them,” Arthur breathed. “What a wonder. Pure British magic.”

  He was like a bird-watcher who’d spotted a rare warbler.

  “Never trust an axman,” Bedivere said. “Give me an honest war hammer any day. We should go back to Camelot for armor.” They were still in their hunting greens.

  “We’d never find this place again. You know how these things work.”

  The king trotted in the direction of the nearest flame knight, drawing Excalibur as he went, which shone with its own pale radiance. Arthur had a tendency—touching in a man who was otherwise so keenly perceptive—to vastly overestimate his own abilities as a swordsman. Bedivere had saved his life more than once on the battlefield, hauling him out of the press, swords and axes drumming like hail on his great sunburst shield.

  Of course Excalibur helped, though it was a funny thing about that sword. Like all the great blades it was made by fairies, not by God. But why not? Was God, for all His power, not much of a swordsmith? Or did He fear to arm His mortal creations? The flame knight showed no sign that he’d even seen them. He stood with the wooden haft of his ax planted on the ground in front of him. It was a heavy weapon, its single flared blade backed by a spike.

  “Sire, let me face this challenge,” Bedivere said.

  “No.”

  “I beg it as a boon.”

  “Denied.”

  “Then we’ll fight it together.”

  “What, two on one?” the king said. “Not very knightly.”

  “That’s not a knight! It’s made of fire!”

  In the end Arthur advanced on the flame knight alone while Bedivere hovered nervously, ready to jump in if things went pear-shaped. The knight stood stock-still till Arthur crossed an invisible line about ten yards away, when he suddenly came frighteningly alert, brought up his weapon, and gripped it two-handed.

  Arthur was completely unafraid, as if the flame knight were a legal loophole or a trade agreement he could solve just by thinking about it. The flame knight started weaving and spinning his weapon in circles and figure eights, a continuous flowing pattern. Arthur hesitated, then backed up again. An ax could be a perplexing proposition if you hadn’t faced one before. It was a crude weapon, unbalanced and single-edged. You couldn’t thrust with it and you could barely feint or parry. But it was heavy, and all that weight was in its head, so when it hit it cut deep and broke bones.

  The king poked at the weaving ax-head, testing the range. The knight slapped Excalibur aside. Arthur retreated some more. The knight chopped and the king lurched sideways and lost his balance but rolled to his feet again.

  “Stop his weapon!” Bedivere called. “Break up his rhythm!”

  “How?!”

  “With your damn sword! Your Highness!”

  Arthur aimed a hard cut at the ax’s handle—maybe he thought he could hack through the wood, or get at the knight’s fingers. He didn’t do either, but he did interrupt the weaving pattern, and he had the sense to press his advantage with a string of wild hammering blows. Excalibur rang at different musical pitches in the stillness, a chiming anvil chorus. Now it was the flame knight who gave ground, backing up toward the drawbridge.

  “Ha!” Arthur shouted.

  Bedivere stole a glance at the other axmen, but they were still at their posts, indifferent to their comrade’s fate.

  The king and the flame knight circled, Arthur sweating visibly in the dry air. Bedivere winced as the knight tried to hook the sword out of Arthur’s hand with his ax-head. He didn’t get it, but he did yank Arthur close enough to catch him in a bear hug. The king grunted with pain and wriggled and tore himself loose. One side of his face was red where it had touched the hot metal.

  “God’s bottom!” It was about the worst profanity Arthur would utter.

  He bulled inside the knight’s reach and shoved him off balance—a knight made of flame couldn’t have weighed very much—and forced him back a couple of steps into the shallow moat. When the knight touched the water steam exploded around his ankles with a high whistling noise. He dropped his ax and fell to his hands and knees as if stricken with agony or regret. More steam burst out. He tried to crawl out of the water.

  But he got no mercy from Blaec Artair. With a look of studied concentration, the king kicked the knight onto his side and the water sizzled and hissed around him. A shroud of steam hid them both for a moment, but Bedivere heard Arthur banging on the knight’s armor with Excalibur like a bell as the knight wallowed helplessly in the moat. The king struck his helmet once, twice, and on the third try it came off completely and a blast of heat exploded from where the knight’s neck would have been, a jet of flame so blue it was almost clear, boiling the water and sending up still more white clouds.

  Arthur skipped back. Even from where he was standing Bedivere could feel the heat on his face.

  “Well fought, my king,” he said. “Magnificently fought.”

  Arthur was breathing hard but already calming down.

  “Poor beggar,” he said. “I wonder what he feels.”

  “I doubt he had a wife and children, if that’s what you mean. I would imagine he feels a great contentment. He spent his life here waiting for a fight, and he was granted a magnificent duel with the king of Britain himself. His fellows must envy him.”

  The moat was a burnt umber now from the sunset, and the steam was a towering white pillar, alone in the emptiness, taller than the castle.

  “You think that’s his head?” Arthur said. “That—form of fire? Or is it his blood, and he’s bleeding to death?”

  “I suspect the latter. He does look like he’s dying.”

  “Probably phlogiston comes into this somehow. Merlin would know.”

  The flame was dwindling. In a minute they would cross the drawbridge and the true nature of the adventure would reveal itself. The holy secret of the four-gated castle. Arthur took off one glove and dabbed at his burned face with a fingertip.

  “How bad’s my ear?” he asked.

  Bedivere took this as an excuse to lean in close. The king smelled of sour sweat and sweet cloves. What exactly did Arthur know? Bedivere wondered that every day. After all, did the king not see everything for what it was? Was that not his gift of gifts? If Arthur had closed his eyes then, angled his chin just a little, Bedivere could have kissed him. Would his touch scorch the king, the way the embrace of the flaming knight had?

  But Bedivere did nothing. Sometimes he didn’t know if he was a brave man or a coward.

  “Your ear looks fine,” he said.

  * * *

  • • •

  Inside, in the great hall, they found a young woman seated at a long oak table. She was slender and straight-backed, with dark braids and two spots of high color in her pale cheeks. A fire roared in the hearth.

  It took a moment for Bedivere to recall what the place reminded him of: it was like Little Dunoak Hall, Arthur’s childhood home. Bronze shields and crossed spears adorned the walls, and the beams were carved and painted with curling, twisting, spiraling designs. There were no Roman trappings here, and no crosses either. This was the old Britain, from before the invasion. The cooking smells were different, too, plain and simple, no Roman spices, no olive oil.

  But unlike Little Dunoak this hall was rich and beautifully appointed. Most Old Britons were farmers and peasants; Bedivere hadn’t known there were Britons who lived like this, like lords. There must be a whole kingdom here, a shadow kingdom within Arthur’s kingdom. Or was it Arthur’s kingdom that was the shadow?

  If Arthur noticed—and how could he not have?—he said nothing, and his face gave nothing away. He never talked about his childhood. Bedivere scanned the room for avenues of attack or escape. There were still places in Britain where kings didn’t go without a significant escort.

  The woman wore an intricately braided golden torc around her neck that must have weighed at least a pound. A big man with an ostentatiously barbarian mustache and forked beard stood at a table carving slices from a haunch of roasted venison, pointedly ignoring them. The Red Knight, presumably, now out of his red armor.

  The woman rose, with a smile.

  “You must have beaten one of the Burning Brothers.”

  She spoke Latin but with a strong British accent. They were siblings, Bedivere hazarded, not a married couple. He had the sense that he and Arthur were interrupting a long silence.

  “My lady,” Bedivere said, “the man you address so familiarly is King Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther, Lord of Camelot, King of Logres, Pictland, Glamorgan, Cornwall, the Out Isles, Orkney, and many lands beyond.”

  “My name is Elidir,” the man said bluntly. “And this is my sister, Ystradel. We recognize no king but our father, King Bran.”

  That was treason, pure and simple, and Bedivere would’ve laid hands on him but Arthur raised two fingers slightly: let it go.

  “We would be grateful for whatever hospitality you could offer us,” the king said.

  If Ystradel was awed by the company she was in, she hid it well.

  “Of course. We don’t have many visitors.”

  “That’s probably because of the Burning Brothers,” Bedivere said.

  The venison was in fact excellent, tender and rich, though to go with it they were served mead, which Bedivere found unpleasantly sweet, and he knew it would give him a ferocious hangover. He drank it anyway. There was no hurry now. Once the divine machinery of an adventure was in motion Arthur liked to draw it out, study it and savor its every last wrinkle. After a suitable interval Ystradel rose and began what sounded like a well-rehearsed speech, like a docent at some minor, rarely visited historical landmark.

  “You will have seen that there is a curse on this land.”

  “Hard to miss,” her brother muttered.

  “Our father the king brought it on us by misadventure. Years ago on his travels he came across a strange ship steered by an elderly man. The ship carried a spear on a velvet cushion. It dripped blood from its tip continuously. The man told my father that it was the Holy Lance, the same that had pierced the side of Jesus, and it could be wielded only by a perfect king.

  “My father was a good pagan, and he sacrificed faithfully to many gods, including Jesus. He was as loath as any man to refuse a challenge. And why would the spear have come to him if he wasn’t supposed to use it? So he took it up.

  “This proved to be a mistake. The moment he grasped it the spear turned on him and stabbed him through both his thighs. At that very same moment the sky turned white, and the soil was bleached, and the trees died. His kingdom became a Waste Land.

  “Our father survived and was carried home in a litter, but his wounds have never healed. Ever since then he has lain in his chamber, in the dark, in pain, with this blasted country all around him. He lives—indeed he cannot seem to die—but until he is healed, our land will not heal.”

  Logs shifted in the grate. The place had the dry chill of the desert at night. Those curious curling designs tugged at Bedivere’s vision, always on the verge of becoming tendrils or snakes or waves but never quite doing so.

  “My brother and I are waiting for a knight of purity and goodness to come and anoint his wounds. If the prophesy is true then when he whom we await touches them, the wounds will heal. When the king is whole again, the land will be whole too.”

  Her speech finished, Ystradel stood up. She seemed eager to wrap up the formalities.

  “I understand.” Arthur stood too. “We will try this adventure, and may God have mercy on us all. But a word with my companion first, if you please.”

  He took Bedivere aside.

  “You think I can do this?” he said in a low voice.

  “No.”

  “Be frank. On no account spare my feelings.”

  “My liege, I think it extremely unlikely that you will accomplish this adventure.”

  Arthur was a brave knight, and a zealous Christian, and the best of all kings, but he was not without stain, at least as God judged these things. He’d had a child out of wedlock with his own half sister, which seemed like the kind of detail God was unlikely to overlook. For some of the more rigorous adventures you had to be an actual virgin.

  “If it were a question of bravery alone,” Bedivere said, “or goodness, or perspicacity—”

  “Then the question becomes, why would God give us an adventure we can’t perform?”

  “Why would He give their father a spear he couldn’t pick up? You are a good man and a great king, Arthur. The rest is up to Him.”

  “So it is. Keep an eye on the brother, he could be a fiend in disguise.”

  King Bran’s bedroom was up a flight of stairs, directly above the great hall. Bedivere wondered if he could hear what was said down there, and if so, how many times he’d had to listen to his children rehearse the story of his disgrace. It was fully night now, and Elidir led the way with a torch. They stopped at a wooden door into which small, neat black letters had been burned, as if written with a red-hot iron:

  THE KNIGHT WHO FULFILLS THIS QUEST WILL NOT FULFILL THIS QUEST

  “What do you make of that, Bedivere?”

  “A riddle, my king. Or a paradox.”

  “It’s always been there,” Ystradel said. “Or at least as long as we can remember.” There was a low groan from behind the door. “Please. He’s in pain.”

  Bedivere wondered how long they’d been here, hostages to their father’s error. Arthur squared his shoulders and pushed open the door.

  Nauseous sickroom air breathed out at them: warm and damp, hints of vomit and rot. Arthur showed no fear or disgust. It was a feat Bedivere had watched him perform a thousand times: striding into a room as if he were entering a feast in his honor, filling it with calm and goodwill, no matter what it contained before he arrived. Bedivere could make out the white shape of a bed and a pale attenuated body lying on it uncovered, wearing only a loincloth.

  Dark spreading stains bloomed around it. The sight brought to mind the deposed Christ. The old king coughed. He was emaciated, with long, lank, white hair. Arthur bent over him without the slightest squeamishness.

  “Ah, my friend,” he said gently, “this will never do. Let us see if we can help you.”

  He dabbled his fingers in a dish of oil and laid them on the old man’s wounds. His tenderness made Bedivere’s heart ache: pettily he envied the old king for receiving Arthur’s attentions. The spear must have gone through his thighs front to back, though by luck or divine mercy it had missed the femoral artery. Bedivere scanned the room continuously for sudden movements, but Elidir did not appear in any danger of throwing off his mortal seeming and becoming a fiend. They were only an old man in pain and his children.

  Next Arthur washed the wounds, which made the man gasp in agony. Ystradel and Elidir kept their faces studiously neutral, betraying neither hope nor disappointment.

  “Arthur—”

  “I know. I know!” Arthur threw down the towel in frustration. “God’s bones!”

  He kicked the wall.

  “By my faith, I have failed!”

  “Now him,” Elidir said.