the boy. ‘They’ll think I’m dead.’
‘No, they won’t,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you back home soon enough, once your clothes are dry. The ladies wanted to send you back straight away, all cold and wet; but I wouldn’t have it. “We’ll send him back warm and dry,” I told them. And so I will, I promise you; and this king does not break his promises, not any more.’
‘A king? You are a king?’
‘I told you. I am Arthur Pendragon, High King of Britain, hibernating these past centuries here in Lyonesse.’
The boy had to smile a little despite himself. The old man nodded knowingly, and went on. ‘You don’t believe me, do you? Well, why should you? But believe I took you from the sea. Believe I carried you in here. Believe those are your clothes drying by the fire. Believe you are lying in my bed. Here, feel my hand. Flesh and blood like yours.’ The hand that touched the boy’s face was warm and rough, rough like his father’s fisherman’s hands. ‘See?’
‘But King Arthur – it’s all just stories, a myth.’
‘A myth, you say! A myth! Do you hear that, Bercelet? Your master’s a myth.’ He turned to the boy again. ‘You have heard of me then?’
‘Yes,’ said the boy. ‘A little. The sword, in the lake.’
‘Excalibur. Is that all you know? Well, whilst we’re waiting for your clothes to dry, you shall hear the rest. It’s a long story, a story of great love, of great tragedy, of magic and mystery, of hope, of triumph and of disaster. It is my story, but not only my story. In those empty chairs you see about the Round Table, there once sat a company of knights, the finest, bravest men this world has ever seen. And they were my friends too. I’ll tell you about them, I’ll tell you about me. Lie back now and rest.’
He patted the bed beside him, and Bercelet jumped up and stretched out beside the boy. He sighed deeply and licked his paw. ‘I know, Bercelet, you’ve heard it all before, haven’t you? And besides, you were there – for most of it anyway.’ The dog closed his eyes and sighed again. ‘Well, the boy hasn’t heard it, so you’ll just have to put up with it. I’ll begin at the beginning, when I was a boy and not much older than you are now.’
Arthur Pendragon sat down by the fire, stared into it for a moment, and then began.
2 NOBODY’S CHILD
I LOOK AT YOU AND SEE MYSELF AS THE CHILD I once was, a dreamer, a wanderer. I have to strain to remember the castle where I grew up, the bed I slept in, the table I ate at. But I can still see clear in my mind the wild forests of Wales and the wind-blasted mountains above them where I passed my early years. And they were carefree, those years. I had a mother for my best friend, and a father for my constant companion and teacher. He taught me how to hunt, to stalk silently, to kill cleanly. From him I learnt how to handle a hawk, to sweeten in a fox, to hold a bow without a tremble as I pulled it taut, and to use a sword and a spear as a knight should. But from my mother I learnt the great things. I learnt what is right, what is wrong, what should be and what should not be – lessons I am still learning even now, my friend. I never in my life have loved anyone more than my mother, and I think I never hated anyone more than my elder brother Kay.
Kay was six years older than I was and the bane of my young life. Time and again he would foist the blame for his own misdeeds on to my shoulders, for ever trying to turn Father against me – and in this he often succeeded. I would find myself banished to my room or whipped for something I had not done. I can see now the triumphant sneer in my brother’s eyes. But with Mother he was never able to taint me. She would never hear a word against me, from Kay or from Father. She was my constant ally, my rock.
But she died. She died when I was just twelve years old. As she lay on her deathbed, her eyes open and unseeing, I reached out to touch her cheek for the last time. Kay grasped my arm and pulled me back.
‘Don’t you dare touch her,’ he said, eyes blazing. ‘She’s my mother, not yours. You don’t have a mother.’ I appealed to Father and saw the flicker in his eye that told me that Kay was speaking the truth.
‘Kay,’ he said, shaking his head sadly. ‘How can you say such a thing now, and with your mother lying still warm in death? What I told you, I told you in trust. How can you be so cruel? And you a son of mine.’
‘And me?’ I said. ‘Am I not a son of yours too? Was she not my mother?’
‘Neither,’ said Father, and he looked away from me. ‘I would have told you before, but could never bring myself to do it.’
‘Then,’ I cried, ‘if I am not yours, and if I am not hers, whose am I? I can’t be nobody’s child.’
He took me by the shoulders. ‘Dear boy,’ he said, and he suddenly looked an old man, ‘I cannot tell you who you are. All I know is that you were brought here as a newborn baby by Merlin. It was Merlin who made me promise to keep you, to protect you and to bring you up as I would my own son and this I have done to my very best. If there have been times when I was hard on you, then it was because I always had that promise to fulfil.’
‘Merlin?’ I asked. ‘Who is this Merlin?’
Kay scoffed at that. ‘Do you do nothing but dream? Everyone knows who Merlin is. He’s the maker of the old druid magic, a weaver of spells, a soothsayer. He knows what will happen, long before it does happen. He knows everything that has been and everything that will be. Why he bothered with you I can’t imagine.’
I turned to Father. ‘Is this all true? I was brought here by this Merlin? My mother is not my mother? You are not my father?’ He nodded and I could see the pain in his face reflecting my own. But Kay had to rub more salt in the wound.
‘So you see,’ he crowed. ‘You are a bastard, a foundling. You should be grateful we took you in.’
At that my blood was up. Small though I was, I felled him with one blow and I would have done him more damage had not Father pulled me off him.
‘That is not the way I have taught you, Arthur,’ he said, still holding me back. But I broke free of him and ran off into the forest. There I wandered for days and days like some wounded animal, maddened with pain.
I found myself sometime later in a hidden valley covered with a purple mist of bluebells, and a stream running softly over the stones. Faint with hunger and thirst, I lay down and drank my fill. And as I drank, I thought. I had heard of old men and old women who have no longer the will to go on living, who would seek out just such a hidden place and lie down to die, to be eaten by wolves, and to be picked clean by crows. There on the bank among the bluebells I decided to lie down and never get up again. I closed my eyes and began the sleep of death. I was not afraid. I would join Mother and leave the misery of this world behind me.
Deep in my troubled dreams I heard the approach of an animal picking its way through the bluebells, splashing through the stream. I felt hot breath on my face, and knew I was not in my dream any more. I braced myself for the shaking and tearing I knew I would have to endure before I died. I opened my eyes, curious to see the wolf that would finish me. He stood over me, his tongue drooling, his great grey eyes blinking lazily. It was no wolf but a deerhound; and then a voice was calling him off. An old man in rags, a beggarman he seemed to be, was fording the stream, barefoot on the stones and leaning on a staff to steady himself against the current. I struggled in my weakness to push the dog off me.
‘You’re
