Bernard Cornwell - Excalibur

The Saxons have returned, though whether it was their spearmen who started the fires we saw on our eastern horizon last night, no one knows. Yet the fires burned bright, flaring in the night sky like a foretaste of hell. A farmer came at dawn to give us some split logs of lime that we can use to make a new butter churn, and he told us the fires were set by raiding Irish, but we doubt that for there have been too many stories of Saxon warbands in the last few weeks. Arthur’s achievement was to keep the Saxons at bay for a whole generation, and to do it he taught our Kings courage, but how feeble our rulers have become since then! And now the Sais return like a plague.

Dafydd, the clerk of the justice who translates these parchments into the British tongue, arrived to collect the newest skins today and he told me that the fires were almost certainly Saxon mischief, and afterwards informed me that Igraine’s new son is to be named Arthur. Arthur ap Brochvael ap Perddel ap Cuneglas; a good name, though Dafydd plainly did not approve of it, and at first I was not sure why. He is a small man, not unlike Sansum, with the same busy expression and the same bristly hair. He sat in my window to read the finished parchments and kept tutting and shaking his head at my handwriting.

‘Why,’ he finally asked me, ‘did Arthur abandon Dumnonia?’

‘Because Meurig insisted on it,’ I explained, ‘and because Arthur himself never wanted to rule.’

‘But it was irresponsible of him!’ Dafydd said sternly.

‘Arthur was not a king,’ I said, ‘and our laws insist that only kings can rule.’

‘Laws are malleable,’ Dafydd said with a sniff, ‘I should know, and Arthur should have been a king.’

‘I agree,’ I said, ‘but he was not. He was not born to it and Mordred was.’

‘Then nor was Gwydre born to the kingship,’ Dafydd objected.

‘True,’ I said, ‘but if Mordred had died, Gwydre had as good a claim as anyone, except Arthur, of course, but Arthur did not want to be King.’ I wondered how often I had explained this same thing.

‘Arthur came to Britain,’ I said, ‘because he took an oath to protect Mordred, and by the time he went to Siluria he had achieved all that he had set out to do. He had united the kingdoms of Britain, he had given Dumnonia justice and he had defeated the Saxons. He might have resisted Meurig’s demands to yield his power, but in his heart he didn’t want to, and so he gave Dumnonia back to its rightful King and watched all that he had achieved fall apart.’

‘So he should have remained in power,’ Dafydd argued. Dafydd, I think, is very like Saint Sansum, a man who can never be in the wrong.

‘Yes,’ I said, ‘but he was tired. He wanted other men to carry the burden. If anyone was to blame, it was me! I should have stayed in Dumnonia instead of spending so much time in Isca. But at the time none of us saw what was happening. None of us realized Mordred would prove a good soldier, and when he did we convinced ourselves that he would die soon enough and Gwydre would become King. Then all would have been well. We lived in hope rather than in the real world.’

‘I still think Arthur let us down,’ Dafydd said, his tone explaining why he disapproved of the new Edling’s name. How many times have I been forced to listen to that same condemnation of Arthur? If only Arthur had stayed in power, men say, then the Saxons would still be paying us tribute and Britain would stretch from sea to sea, but when Britain did have Arthur it just grumbled about him. When he gave folk what they wanted, they complained because it was not enough. The Christians attacked him for favouring the pagans, the pagans attacked him for tolerating the Christians, and the Kings, all except Cuneglas and Oengus mac Airem, were jealous of him. Oengus’s support counted for little, but when Cuneglas died Arthur lost his most valuable royal supporter. Besides, Arthur did not let anyone down. Britain let itself down. Britain let the Saxons creep back, Britain squabbled amongst itself and then Britain whined that it was all Arthur’s fault. Arthur, who had given them victory!

Dafydd skimmed through the last few pages. ‘Did Ceinwyn recover?’ he asked me.

‘Praise God, yes,’ I said, ‘and lived for many years after.’ I was about to tell Dafydd something of those last years, but I could see he was not interested and so I kept my memories to myself. In the end Ceinwyn died of a fever. I was with her, and I wanted to burn her corpse, but Sansum insisted that she was buried in the Christian manner. I obeyed him, but a month later I arranged for some men, the sons and grandsons of my old spearmen, to dig up her corpse and burn it on a pyre so that her soul could go to join her daughters in the Otherworld and for that sinful action I have no regrets. I doubt that any man will do as much for me, though perhaps Igraine, if she reads these words, will have my balefire built. I pray so.

‘Do you change the tale when you translate it?’ I asked Dafydd.

‘Change it?’ He looked indignant. ‘My Queen won’t let me change a syllable!’

‘Truly?’ I asked.

‘I might correct some infelicities of grammar,’ he said, collecting the skins, ‘but nothing else. I presume the ending of the story is close now?’

‘It is.’

‘Then I shall return in a week,’ he promised, and pushed the parchments into a bag and hurried away. A moment later Bishop Sansum scurried into my room. He was carrying a strange bundle which at first I took to be a stick wrapped up in an old cloak. ‘Did Dafydd bring news?’ he asked.

‘The Queen is well,’ I said, ‘as is her child.’ I decided against telling Sansum that the child was to be named Arthur, for it would only annoy the saint and life is much easier in Dinnewrac when Sansum is in a good temper.

‘I asked for news,’ Sansum snapped, ‘not women’s gossip about a child. What about the fires? Did Dafydd mention the fires?’

‘He knows no more than we do, Bishop,’ I said, ‘but King Brochvael believes they are Saxons.’

‘God preserve us,’ Sansum said, and walked to my window from where the smear of smoke was still just visible in the east. ‘God and His saints preserve us,’ he prayed, then came to my desk and put the strange bundle on top of this skin. He pulled away the cloak and I saw, to my astonishment, and almost to the provocation of my tears, that it was Hywelbane. I did not dare show my emotion, but instead crossed myself as if I was shocked by the appearance of a weapon in our monastery. ‘There are enemies near,’ Sansum said, explaining the sword’s presence.

‘I fear you are right, Bishop,’ I said.

‘And enemies provoke hungry men in these hills,’ Sansum went on, ‘so at night you will stand guard on the monastery.’

‘So be it, Lord,’ I said humbly. But me? Stand guard? I am white-haired, old and feeble. One might as well ask a toddling child to stand guard as to rely on me, but I made no protest and once Sansum had left the room I slid Hywelbane from her scabbard and thought how heavy she had become during the long years she had lain in the monastery’s treasure cupboard. She was heavy and clumsy, but she was still my sword, and I peered at the yellowed pig bones set into her hilt and then at the lover’s ring that was bound about its pommel and I saw, on that flattened ring, the tiny scraps of gold I had stolen from the Cauldron so long ago. She brought back so many stories, that sword. There was a patch of rust on her blade and I carefully scraped it away with the knife I use for sharpening my quills, and then I cradled her for a long time, imagining that I was young again and still strong enough to wield her. But me? Stand guard? In truth Sansum did not want me to stand guard, but rather to stand like a fool to be sacrificed while he scuttled out of the back door with Saint Tudwal in one hand and the monastery’s gold in the other. But if that is to be my fate I will not complain. I would rather die like my father with my sword in my hand, even if my arm is weak and the sword blunt. That was not the fate Merlin wanted for me, nor what Arthur wanted, but it is not a bad way for a soldier to die, and though I have been a monk these many years and a Christian even longer, in my sinful soul I am still a spearman of Mithras. And so I kissed my Hywelbane, glad to see her after all these years. So now I shall write the tale’s ending with my sword beside me and I shall hope that I am given time to finish this tale of Arthur, my Lord, who was betrayed, reviled and, after his departure, missed like no other man was ever missed in all of Britain’s history.