At the Crossing Places (7 page)

R
AHERE WAS SITTING UNDER THE TABLE. AS SOON AS
he saw me, he called out, “Can you sing, Arthur?
Ut, re, mi
…”

“I don't want to sing,” I said.

I haven't wanted to do anything all day, and above all, I don't want to have to go to Gortanore.

“What are you doing under that table?” I asked.

“Why is a man usually under a table?”

“When he's drunk.”

“I'm drunk with sorrow here in my prison.” Rahere plucked the fingerboard string of his fiddle, lower and lower. In his light voice, he started to sing:

“You all know, my earls and barons
—English, Norman, Poitevin, Gascon—
I've never had one companion
So worthless I'd abandon
Him because of the ransom.
I'm making no accusation
But, dear God, I'm still in prison.”

“That's a very mournful song,” I said.

“Coeur-de-Lion composed it while he was imprisoned by Leopold of Austria.”

“I know about that,” I said. “He had to wait two winters before he was ransomed. And while he was in prison, his mother cared for his kingdom.”

Rahere plucked the top string of his fiddle:

“If this western world were mine
From the foreshore to the Rhine
I would give it all away
—all its manors, all its farms—
If the Queen of England
Would but lie in my arms.”

Rahere grinned and laid his fingertips over his sky-blue eye. “That's what they sing-and-say about Queen Eleanor. What about your mother, Arthur? Is she as beautiful as that? Now come on!
Ut, re, mi, fa, sol, la
…”

W
HEN I OPENED THE CHURCH DOOR, ROWENA WAS
standing just inside it, looking as flushed as Tanwen did when I found her with Serle in the kitchen at Caldicot. Her eyes were burning. Then she brushed past me and ran down to the lych-gate.

Haket stepped out of the church-gloom.

“What's wrong with Rowena?” I asked.

“I…she was instructing me,” Haket said.

“What? In needlework?”

“Ha!” exclaimed Haket. “Of course not.”

“What then?”

“In minding my own business,” Haket said sharply, and he put his hands on his hips and tugged down his gown.

“I was only asking.”

“And if you keep sticking your nose into other people's business—” said Haket, grabbing and twisting my nose, “—it will come off. What happens in confession is secret, as you well know. It's only for the ears of the priest—and God.”

“Does God have ears?” I asked.

Haket looks rough-hewn, as if God left off making him halfway through. His cheekbones are like planks and his chin like a sawing block, and his skin's rough as bark. He has a big red mouth.

“That's enough of that,” Haket replied, leading the way into his
vestry, which is just as damp and chilly as the one at Caldicot. “Let me hear you read. The Book of Exodus, chapter twenty, beginning at the twelfth verse.”

“Honor thy father and mother…” I began.

My father. How can I? How can I honor him? He's a murderer and he beats Lady Alice. He wounded me in my right shoulder and I think he may have meant to. I do honor my mother, though. I think about her and pray for her each day.

“Arthur!” said Haket keenly. “What's wrong with you today?”

“Thou shalt not murder,” I read. “Thou shalt not commit ad…adult…”

“Adultery,” said Haket.

“What's that?”

“Go on.”

“Thou shalt not steal…”

When I have my lessons with Oliver, it's often quite easy to distract him because he likes the sound of his own voice. He doesn't mind me arguing with him either, and that way I've found out lots of new things.

But Haket is much more unbending. When I am reading, I have to read. When I'm writing, I have to write. Like Oliver, he won't hear of my using my left hand, and several times he has smacked it.

Haket is nothing like as rude about the Saracens as Oliver; but all the same, he believes they worship a false prophet and are not equal with Christians in the eyes of God.

“Does God have eyes?” I asked. “Is He shaped like a human being?”

But of course Haket refused to change the subject. “In truth, many men who say they're Christian…” he began. “Arthur, have you heard how King Richard defeated Saladin, the Saracen leader, at Arsuf?”

“Yes.”

“Because of Coeur-de-Lion, we do still have a kingdom of Jerusalem. But although King Richard stood and stared at the gates of Jerusalem itself, he could never enter the Holy City. Do you know why not?”

“Because his men were exhausted.”

“Because Christendom is a wasteland.”

“What does that mean?”

“A wilderness, Arthur. A wasteland of the spirit. Many men are behaving like animals. Think of the wildmen who imprisoned King Richard at Dürnstein. They guarded him night and day with unsheathed swords.”

I thought of the beautiful, horrid man on my clay tile: little lower than the angels, little better than a hideous beast…

“Pay attention!” said Haket. “This is the truth. Many men and women say they're Christian, but do not behave in a Christian manner. Is everyone here at Holt Christian? Is that what you think?”

“I don't know,” I faltered.

“All over Europe, people take the law into their own hands,” Haket said, “and their law is to threaten and maim, to rape and kill. Until we're Christian not only in word but in deed, how can we enter Jerusalem?”

“But human beings can never be perfect,” I said.

“That is the paradox,” Haket said, “and I want you to think about it. That's all for this afternoon.”

I put my hand on top of the vestry chest and pulled myself up.

“Oh!” I exclaimed. “Look!”

Haket looked.

“Rowena's muffler!” I said. “I'll give it to her.”

Haket squeezed the muffler in one of his horny hands. “I'll give it to her myself,” he said.

But what was Rowena doing in the vestry? I thought Haket said she'd come to church to make her confession. He can't have been telling me the truth.

L
ATE THIS AFTERNOON, I HELPED RHYS TO GROOM
Bonamy. He must be three hands taller than Pip, and I had to stand on the mounting block to reach across his back.

“Bonamy!” said Rhys. “What kind of a name is that?”

“French,” I replied.

“Poor beast!” said Rhys.

“ ‘Good friend.' That's what it means.” I laid my hand on Bonamy's muzzle. “And that's what he'll be when we're crusading,” I said.

In the dying light, the star on Bonamy's forehead began to shine, and when I left the stables, he whinnied.

There was still some time before supper, so I looked into my seeing stone…

Her smolder of Welsh gold hair, hanging thickly over her shoulders.

Her eyes, chestnut, with little yellow flecks in them, and her eyebrows, so delicate, like new quills, like skeletons of leaves.

Her wasp waist…

Arthur-in-the-stone can scarcely bear to look at Guinevere, sitting with her father, King Leodegrance, on the other side of the great hall. But he cannot bear not to.

“I love her,” he tells Merlin.

Merlin slowly shakes his head. “Love can be blind,” he says.

This is the same hall where I saw King Uther fall in love with Ygerna, her sloping shoulders and slender arms, her violet eyes; where I saw him feast and hold court and lie on his deathbed, poisoned by his enemies.

“Against your enemies,” Merlin says, “God was on your side. You were fighting in the name of Vortigern, Uther Pendragon, and all the kings of Britain who have been and will be. Your enemies are oath-breakers, law-duckers, crown-mockers.”

“I swung my sword,” says Arthur, “and sheared through one man's helmet, right down to his teeth.”

“If a man is weak, his rivals soon pounce on him,” Merlin says.

“Then why did you stop me?”

“If you hadn't stopped, God would have grown angry and turned the tide. The battlefield was swimming with brains and blood.”

“Many men loyal to the crown died in the fight,” the king says.

“There's always a cost,” Merlin replies in his deep, dark voice. “But after this, no one will be quite so eager to confront you. It's another thing, though, to win the battle with ourselves.”

“We're each our own worst enemy,” says Arthur-in-the-stone. “Is that what you mean?”

“I mean Guinevere,” says Merlin.

“But I love her.”

Merlin waves his spotty hand. “Don't say I haven't warned you,” he murmurs.

“I love her and I always will.”

“I can see you've made up your mind,” Merlin says. “But if you were not so deeply in love, I could find you a wife beautiful and loyal. You would love her, and she would always love you.”

O
NE OF LORD STEPHEN'S MUSTER OF PEACOCKS WAS
standing in front of the armory door, displaying his feathers, and as we walked up to him, he screamed. “Beautiful creatures, vile tempers!” Lord Stephen said. “Go on with you!”

The peacock held his ground.

“Go on!” Lord Stephen barked, and he poked at the peacock with his stick until it strutted away. “Now, you know about Alan, do you?”

“Sir?”

“You don't! Last night a worm…it came out under his right eyeball.”

“A tapeworm!”

“His whole eye's on fire. As red as the setting sun. So I've sent him down to see what Agnes can do for him; I told him we can manage for ourselves.”

Everything went all right to begin with. First, I invited Lord Stephen to sit on the armory stool, and knelt in front of him, and fitted on his leather boots. Then I wrapped his shins and knees with strips of boiled leather, and over them I strapped his shining greaves.

“Tightly round my calves,” Lord Stephen said. “But leave some room round the backs of my knees.”

I had more trouble with Lord Stephen's thigh-pieces. They kept slipping out of position, and then Lord Stephen said the right one felt very sharp. Before long, he complained that his right foot felt wet, and when I pulled off his boot, it was swilling with blood.

Lord Stephen wrenched off his right thigh-piece, screwed up his eyes and inspected it.

“I thought so,” he said. “Look at this!”

One of the nail-bolts had lost its rounded head.

“Spiked!” said Lord Stephen.

“What shall I do, sir?”

Lord Stephen laughed. “Many men get wounded on the battlefield,” he said, “but not so many in their own armories!”

And not so many, I thought, when they cross swords with their own fathers. I'm sure Sir William tricked me, and when I think about having to meet him, the nape of my neck begins to tingle.

Lord Stephen rubbed away some of the blood. “Run and ask Agnes to come up to the hall as soon as she can,” he told me. “We're certainly keeping her busy this morning.”

“Alan will blame me for being careless,” I said.

“It's Alan who was careless,” Lord Stephen said sharply. “I expect my armorer to keep my armor in good repair.”

Sir William told me once that Lord Stephen would never be strong enough to be a crusader, but I think he was wrong. He is always robust in spirit, even if he is not very manly in body.

G
UINEVERE AND ARTHUR-IN-THE STONE: THEY'RE SIT
ting on top of Tumber Hill.

With Merlin and Ygerna. With a gnashing of knights and a loop of ladies. A May-month of squires and a secret of young women. With a stumble-and-swill of people from the common fields, stables, sties, and barns. A cheer of children…

They're sitting on three-legged stools carved from white ivory. Each has one leopard leg, one antelope leg, and one leg of manticore.

Ringed by a muster of peacocks. Preening popinjays and wobblethroated pigeons and red-breasted robins, all-promising larks. A charm of goldfinches…

This whole, sweet, green patient world at their feet, face upward.

Flanked by a pride of lions. Hugging brown bears and mistyeyed cows, see-yourself monkeys and sheepish sheep. A peep of chickens…

This world's ministry is gathered on top of Tumber Hill for their wedding feast.

Servants step out of the beech woods, carrying bread baskets
and flagons of red and white wine, and they lay them on long tables dressed with damask.

A string of harpers. A fretsaw of fiddlers…

Arthur and Guinevere gaze at each other. They seal their love with a kiss.

“I will give each man and woman in my kingdom whatever they ask of me,” the young king calls out.

And now a young woman walks right up to them and she begins to sing:

“Love without heartache, love without fear
Is fire without flame and flame without heat.”

I remember! It's the song the girl sang at Caldicot last Christmas. The snow-skinned girl with bruises under her eyes, her voice as piercing as the North Star.

“
Dulcis amor!
” the girl sings.

“Bittersweet!” all the knights and ladies chorus, the young women and squires. “Sweet bittersweet love.”

Again the girl sings:

“Love without heartache, love without fear
Is day without sunlight, hive without honey.
Love without heartache, love without fear
Is summer without flower, winter without frost.

Dulcis amor!
”

“Bittersweet!” sings the great hill choir. “Sweet bittersweet love.”

Then, around Arthur and Guinevere, all God's creatures begin to move. They rock and sway and strut and stamp, they leap and lollop and plod and pad, they hop and flutter and fly: grave and gay, each of them, caught up in this world's dance.