By comparison, the great treasure of Camelot was a table in the shape of a circle. Likewise Palomides absolutely enjoyed his tour of Camelot’s Rose Garden, which took (he was being generous) a quarter of an hour, but there were rose gardens back home that covered a hundred acres and were irrigated by waterwheels powered by captive ostriches. He was more saddened than awed at the sight of the two miserable lions in the Royal Menagerie, which his tour guide referred to as leopards. The caliph had a hundred lions, and a hundred leopards too. And while the shelves of Baghdad’s House of Wisdom groaned under a million books, the royal library of Camelot consisted, optimistically, of about thirty-five, most of which were copies of the Christian Bible.

  Also they were all on parchment. Britain had not yet discovered paper.

  There was no sign of any bird-trees at all. He didn’t have the heart to ask.

  As soon as possible Palomides retired to his cold chamber, where he lay down in a swoon of homesickness. He should’ve stayed in Constantinople. He rose again and by means of astronomical readings and spherical trigonometry determined the direction of Mecca so that he could pray facing the proper way.

  He’d come this far, so Palomides determined to make the best of it. He set about parsing the social cosmos of Camelot, making careful notes for his book. King Arthur was at the center, naturally. Working outward you came to Merlin, and Arthur’s one-handed shadow Sir Bedivere, he of the melting, adoring eyes, which he turned jealously on anyone who got too close.

  And of course there was the universally revered Lancelot, whose dominance in the realm of personal combat was so extreme as to be almost bizarre. He pondered Arthur’s motives in keeping someone like that so close, a foreigner with the power to kill at will. If they were closer to home he would have taken Lancelot for one of the fedayeen, an assassin in deep cover.

  The queen of the Britons was a tall, skinny thing with the kind of beauty that one admired more than desired. She struck Palomides as highly intelligent and dangerously bored, an unstable combination. The evidence suggested that she was also infertile, another dangerous quality in a queen, to herself most of all. People spoke freely around Palomides, on the assumption that he couldn’t understand them, and there were those at court who wanted to replace her by whatever means necessary with someone, anyone, who could give the nation a legitimate heir.

  As for Arthur himself, he was a curious combination of irresistible and inscrutable. In this sleepy country, with its fading trappings of Romanity, he was one of a handful of people who seemed fully awake. Arthur was ardently Christian—if his toast landed butter-side up he was on his knees thanking God before you could say “knife”—but he wasn’t afflicted by that aggrieved obsession with converting others from which so many Christians suffered. As befitted the center of the royal cosmos, he had a charisma that was almost solar in its intensity—even Palomides didn’t like to look at it directly, lest he be drawn in and disarmed by it like so many others.

  His troops liked to call him Black Arthur. Though he was as pale as the rest of his race.

  Also like the sun, King Arthur was a furnace of energy. Hassan had said Britain had seven kings, and he wasn’t wrong; Arthur was seven kings in one. He was trying to keep his barbarian nation from sliding into complete savagery by main force, single-handedly. When he wasn’t off fighting or adventuring or surveying coastal defenses or treating with the clergy, he was commissioning public buildings or reviewing foreign intelligence or vetting some new judicial appointee or entertaining some sycophantic delegation from somewhere or other. He never stopped. By custom nobody at court was allowed to sit down until the king did, and by the end of the day they were all drooping with exhaustion because Arthur never sat down.

  What fuel kept that furnace burning so bright and so hot? All fires consume something. It seemed to Palomides that a fire that is not fed, yet still burns, must be consuming itself.

  * * *

  • • •

  Palomides lingered in britain through the summer. The court moved from place to place, Camelot to Caerleon to Londinium to Canterbury (slightly better library) to Cair Ebrauc and back to Camelot, in a great circle, dragging behind it a dragon’s tail of clerks and cooks and courtiers, knights and whores, priests and fools and barbers and lumbering, clinking carts. As the season waned, Palomides felt his sojourn here was drawing to a natural close. It was time to start the long journey home. He’d done what he set out to do. If Britain wasn’t quite ravishing enough to fill a book, well, he’d just make some stuff up.

  Just knowing he was leaving put Palomides in a good mood, so when a group of women of the court asked him to chaperone them on an outing into the countryside, he graciously accepted.

  It wasn’t the first time. The ladies of Camelot were fond of these excursions, and they always took along a couple of knights for protection against bears and bandits and whatever else they might run into. Palomides was a popular choice because it was widely believed that he understood no Latin, which meant they could gossip in front of him freely.

  In fact Palomides’s Latin was quite serviceable by this time, but he still didn’t much care what the ladies said. He stood on the fringes of the gathering, stiff as a marble statue, while they spread out their skirts on the grass and sang and embroidered and told riddles. The women of King Arthur’s court were odd creatures: bold, wittering, thin of blood and pigment, they put him in mind of albino peacocks. They plucked their eyebrows and, perversely, whitened their already pale faces even further with a paste made of flour and rose water.

  Though they were undeniably feminine, and even beguiling at times to a lonely traveler in their form-fitting tunics, the sleeves so tight they had to be sewn into them by their ladies-in-waiting. One of them had a pet squirrel that scampered around on a golden chain.

  As they talked, Palomides gazed off into the middle distance. He liked to imagine himself walking the streets of Baghdad. In his mind he strolled out through Khorasan Gate, across the Tigris via the curving boat bridge, and into the paper-sellers’ market. To the awe and acclamation of all he presented them with the book of his travels. A Journey to the Edge of the World and Back. Or The Book of Routes and Realms. Or more formal: Concerning the Island of Britain, Its People, Climate, and Geography. Or more playful: The Pleasant Wanderings of a Curious Traveler…

  The women were talking about him.

  “He has a noble profile, don’t you think?”

  “Oh, stop. Could you even imagine?”

  “Well, why not? He’s terribly handsome—he is! Look at those shoulders! And he’s probably a prince or a duke or something. They wouldn’t send just anybody.”

  Peals of laughter. Palomides didn’t distinguish very carefully among the ladies of court, but he had noticed the woman who spoke last because she was a recent arrival and extremely pretty, for a Briton anyway, with mischievous pointy eyebrows and an edifice of blond ringlets piled on top of her head.

  Adding to her winsomeness was the very slightest overbite. He’d forgotten her name.

  “Don’t be ridiculous.” A redhead with a wen on her cheek. “They only like boys. Didn’t you know?”

  “Nonsense, he’s always trying to look down our dresses.” A tall, ghostly pale woman made skeptical eyebrows.

  “Never!” The pretty overbitten one again. “I believe that our Sir P. has only the healthiest possible inclinations. And as for looking down a woman’s dress, Sir P. is far too respectful. Not like our men.”

  Sir P. thought it best to feign incomprehension.

  “Which of us do you think he prefers?”

  “Oh, honestly.”

  “Palomino, tell us!” the redhead called. “Which one of us are you in love with?”

  Hilarity of the picnickers.

  “I’m sure he has a beautiful dusky fiancée waiting for him back in Sarras. Pining for him in Oriental splendor. Don’t you, Sir P.?”

  The pretty one looked up and favored him with a wink, tiny but perfect. All gallantry aside, he couldn’t help seeing down her dress, and the view was compelling. He was about to hazard an answer when—

  “Ho ho! What have we here?”

  Three men came swaggering across the field toward them. They were sunburned and red from rough living and wore linen jacks and cheap-looking swords. They appeared to be of a rather lower order of Briton.

  “God give you good day, my ladies! You’ve got nothing to fear from us.” The man who spoke had a boxer’s nose and blond hair plastered down on his scalp. “But I’m afraid it is my duty to inform you that this field you are so comfortably enjoying belongs to us.”

  Palomides thought he must be misunderstanding something, either the man’s Latin or some point of British law.

  “No,” the woman with the overbite said, “it doesn’t. This is the king’s land, so go scamper off up your own arses, all three of you.”

  “That is as it may,” the boxer said merrily. “We shall take it up with the good King Arthur next time we see him. In the meantime you must pay your rent. Must they not, George?”

  George, a heavy, soft-looking man with mournful eyes, confirmed that they did.

  “Nothing you gracious ladies can’t afford, just a quick tumble and your jewelry.” He stuck his thumbs in his belt. “Now. Who will be first to settle her debt?”

  Palomides felt no fear of these men. If anything he felt relief. He was tired of being an observer, a tourist, looking around passively at the scenery. Before he left he wanted to show them what a prince of Baghdad could do—that a great story was unfolding before them, and that he was its hero. The marble statue came to life, and Sir Palomides strode across the picnic blanket, scattering silverware and stepping in a pot of jam.

  “The debt in question is yours, and you will settle it in blood.” In the heat of the moment the Latin language leapt with alacrity to his lips. “Or yield to me as the recreants you are.”

  The women stared helplessly from the suddenly Latin-speaking Sir Palomino to the would-be rapists and back again. It was hard to say which they found more shocking. The thieves stared at Palomides too. Then they burst out laughing.

  “Who brought the chimney sweep?” the boxer said.

  “They left this one in too long!” Even mournful George was delighted. “He’s overdone!”

  The boxer grinned, yellow teeth. Palomides supposed that he wasn’t what their idea of a knight looked like. Maybe his skin was too dark. Maybe he wasn’t dressed right—maybe it was his turban, fine though it was, laced with golden thread. And they did have him three to one. Palomides drew his sword, a straight double-edged blade that bore an inscription in gold: There is no Sword but the Zulfiqar, and there is no Hero but Ali. The only sound in the meadow was the chittering of the golden-chained squirrel.

  Palomides took a sudden jerky half step toward the boxer, who startled and stumbled back. Palomides had left his right side undefended, and George took a big unbalanced swing. The watching women gasped—but of course he’d done it on purpose to draw George out. He spun away from the cut, all the way around, and whipped his sword halfway through George’s neck.

  The dying man dropped, and Palomides freed his sword and sprang at the boxer. To his credit the man didn’t freeze, and he didn’t run. He didn’t lack for courage. But his swordplay was slow and sloppy, and his weapon was a toy next to Palomides’s. The blade of a caliph’s son was forged from Damascus steel, smelted in Syria from Indian iron, and it held an edge like no blade in Britain.

  Palomides smiled as he fought. A ream of paper would’ve given more trouble. Bewildered by the unfamiliar loops and rhythms of his swordwork, the boxer thrust awkwardly, and Palomides simply lopped off the top half of his blade, then severed his forearm. Then he tripped him and stabbed him briskly through the heart.

  By this time the third man was running. Palomides strode back across the blanket, avoiding the jam pot this time, and leapt into the saddle. This horse was no polo pony but he rode it like one, darting and turning, heading the man off every which way, running him all over the field till he finally sank down, gasping and weeping, bewildered, and surrendered. Palomides flipped a mental coin, shrugged, and spared him, on the condition that he swear on his mother’s life to convert to Islam and make a pilgrimage to Mecca. Then he returned to the women.

  Most of them were hiding behind trees and bushes. One had fainted. Two had been sick into their skirts. The squirrel had escaped up a tree; its little body would be found months later hanging from a branch, hopelessly tangled in its golden chain.

  But the lady with the overbite and the blond curls hadn’t hidden or fainted or been sick. Instead she rose to her feet and with a curious gesture detached one of the sleeves of her dress and gave it to Palomides.

  “Best clean your sword,” she said.

  Isolde was her name, that was it—they called her Isolde the Beautiful, or Isolde the Blonde—and at that moment Palomides fell madly in love with her.

  Book II

  A God of Sand and Dust

  In th’olde dayes of the Kyng Arthour,

  Of which that Britons speken greet honour,

  All was this land fulfild of fayerye.

  The elf-queene, with hir joly compaignye,

  Daunced ful ofte in many a grene mede.

  This was the olde opinion, as I rede.

  —“The Wife of Bath’s Tale,” from The Canterbury Tales by Geoffrey Chaucer

  Twelve

  The Novice

  The Green Knight led the way. After him came Bedivere, watching for any signs of trouble. Palomides guarded the rear. They put Collum in the middle, under the supervision of Sir Dinadan, so he couldn’t cause any problems, but he wasn’t going to dwell on that. He was Sir Collum now, knighted by no less a hand than that of Sir Palomides the Saracen. Even with Arthur dead, even with all that had happened, he had that to hold onto. He was Sir Collum, and he was on a quest with the knights of the Round Table.

  Or three of them anyway. Constantine had stayed behind with Nimue to get the defenses in order and rally the nobility and try to pull some kind of army together out of mud and hay and spare pennies in the event that King Rience turned up at the gates. They left Dagonet behind, too, because he didn’t want to come, and nobody wanted him to.

  The Green Knight led them west, staying off the Roman roads and following crooked, thready old footpaths instead, winding through forests and slipping through gaps in hedges and hacking across fields. It was June, and nature wasn’t in mourning for King Arthur. Martins whipped in and out of the trees, and the roadsides were deep with drifts of white wildflowers, wild carrot and cow parsley and white campion. The south was a land of huge meadows, thousand-acre meadows, rippling oceans of tall feathery grasses frosted with seed.

  In the woods their horses waded through lakes of ferns, and you could smell wild garlic in the air. In places the trees had been cut back from the road the length of a bowshot, as a defense against bandits, but mostly they pressed in close, and the tree branches met overhead forming a tunnel of leaves, the green light like the light inside the barrel of a breaking wave.

  The Green Knight refused to say anything about their destination. Collum wondered if he would lead them all the way to the Otherworld. He would follow the knights of the Table anywhere, but he rather hoped he wouldn’t have to go there. Arthur himself had led an expedition to the Otherworld with three dozen picked knights to find the Cauldron of Annwn, which would produce all the food a brave man could eat. Only seven men came back, whispering hoarsely about the gates of Hell and a fortress made of glass. If that was the best King Arthur could do, Collum didn’t much like their chances.

  Dinadan wasn’t overjoyed to be stuck with minding Sir Collum, but he liked to talk—he couldn’t seem to leave a silence unfilled—so they talked about the quest. Did it come from God? If so why would God send something like the Green Knight as His messenger? Why would He kill Sir Villiars? What if it was a trap from Fairy, or the devil?

  Dinadan wasn’t overly concerned. “If it’s a trap then we’ll spring it and give whoever set it the beating they deserve. It’s like Bedivere said, we’re in a new world now. We must divine its nature. And we must show it that our own nature has not changed.”

  Dinadan asked Collum about his life on Mull, and instead of owning up to yesterday’s lies, Collum compounded them by describing his upbringing there as the golden child of Lord Alasdair (Collum gave Alasdair a courtesy promotion from baronet to viscount), groomed in every way for greatness and given every possible advantage. They won’t let you lie like that when you’re a knight, the fairy-woman at the inn said, but now he was a knight and he couldn’t stop. It felt like even a word of the truth would dispel this whole miraculous scene, it would vanish like a fairy castle at dawn, and he’d be left trudging on to Astolat, just another rootless sword for hire.

  They spent a night in the remains of a magnificent Roman villa surrounded by acres of ruined gardens turned savage and unruly by time. Palomides explained how the Romans used to pump hot air under the floors of their houses, through a system of channels, so that they had warm tiles to walk on in winter. Nobody believed him.

  On the afternoon of the second day Bedivere told the Green Knight they were making a detour, and he led them a short way east to where a convent stood by the side of a cracked Roman road, a proud building of honey-colored stone in the shape of a Greek cross, which he identified as Amesbury Abbey. Maybe they were going to hear Mass and make confession? Never a bad idea on a quest. Bedivere announced them through an iron grille.