I saw them first as small figures far below and took them for those others. “See down there, Horace,” I said then. “Already they’ve found each other. Already they come, and as though that fellow took no wounds at all from Brennus.”
And Horace looked my way thoughtfully, as though to ask, “Then, Gawain, will this be the last time we climb this bleak slope together?” And I gave no reply but to stroke gently his neck, though I thought to myself, “That warrior’s young and a terrible fellow. Yet I may have the beating of him, who’s to say? I saw something even as he brought down Brennus’s man. Another would not see it, yet I did. A small opening on the left for a canny foe.”
But what would Arthur have me do now? His shadow still falls across the land and engulfs me. Would he have me crouch like a beast awaiting its prey? Yet where to hide on these bare slopes? Will the wind alone conceal a man? Or should I perch on some precipice and hurl down a boulder at them? Hardly the way for a knight of Arthur. I would rather show myself openly, greet him, try once more a little diplomacy. “Turn back, sir. You endanger not just yourself and your innocent companion, but all the good folk of this country. Leave Querig to one who knows her ways. You see me even now on my way to slay her.” But such pleas were ignored before. Why would he hear me now he is come so close, and the bitten boy to guide him to her very door? Was I a fool to rescue that boy? Yet the abbot appals me so, and I know God will thank me for what I did.
“They come as surely as they have a chart,” I said to Horace. “So where shall we wait? Where shall we face them?”
The copse. I remembered it then. Strange how the trees grow so lush there, when the wind sweeps all around so bare. The copse will provide covering for a knight and his horse. I will not pounce like a bandit, yet why show myself a good hour before the encounter?
So I put a little spur on Horace, though it hardly makes an impression on him now, and we crossed the high edge of the land, neither rising nor falling, battered all the way by the wind. We were both thankful to reach those trees, even if they grow so strangely one wonders if Merlin himself cast a spell here. What a fellow was Master Merlin! I thought once he had placed a spell on Death himself, yet even Merlin has taken his path now. Is it heaven or hell he makes his home? Master Axl may believe Merlin a servant of the devil, yet his powers were often enough spent in ways to make God smile. And let it not be said he was without courage. Many times he showed himself to the falling arrows and wild axes alongside us. These may well be Merlin’s woods, and made for this very purpose: that I may some day shelter here to await the one who would undo our great work of that day. Two of us five fell to the she-dragon, yet Master Merlin stood beside us, moving calmly within the sweep of Querig’s tail, for how else could his work be done?
The woods were hushed and peaceful when Horace and I reached them. Even a bird or two singing in the trees, and if the branches stirred wildly, down below was as a calm spring’s day where at last an old man’s thoughts may drift from one ear to the other without tossing in a tempest! It must be several years now since Horace and I were last in these woods. Weeds have grown monstrous here, a nettle rightly the spread of a small child’s palm stands large enough to wrap around a man twice over. I left Horace at a gentle spot to chew on what he could, and wandered a while beneath the sheltering leaves. Why should I not rest here, leaning on this good oak? And when in time they come to this place, as they surely will, he and I will face each other as fellow warriors.
I pushed through the giant nettles—is it for this I have worn this creaking metal? To defend my shins from these feathery stings?—until I reached the clearing and the pond, the grey sky above it peeping through. Around its rim, three great trees, yet each one cracked at the waist and fallen forward into the water. Surely they stood proudly when we were last here. Did lightning strike them? Or did they in weary old age long for the pond’s succour, always so near where they grew, yet beyond reach? They drink all they wish now, and mountain birds nest in their broken spines. Will it be at such a spot I meet the Saxon? If he defeats me I may have life left to crawl to the water. I would not tumble in, even if the ice would admit me, for it would be no pleasure to grow bloated beneath this armour, and what chance Horace, missing his master, will come tip-toeing through the gnarled roots and drag out my remains? Yet I’ve seen comrades in battle yearn for water as they lie with their wounds, and watched yet others crawl to the edge of a river or lake, even though they double their agonies to do so. Is there some great secret known only to dying men? My old comrade, Master Buel, longed for water that day, as he lay on the red clay of that mountain. There’s water here left in my gourd, I told him, but no, he demands a lake or river. But we’re far from any such thing, I say. “Curse you, Gawain,” he cries. “My last wish, will you not grant it, and we comrades through many bold battles?” “But this she-dragon’s all but parted you in two,” I tell him. “If I must carry you to water, I’ll have to go under this summer sun, a separate part of you under each arm before we reach any such place.” But he says to me, “My heart will welcome death only when you lay me down beside water, Gawain, where I hear its gentle lapping as my eyes close.” He demands this, and cares not whether our errand is well done, or if his life is given at a good price. Only when I reach down to raise him does he ask: “Who else survives?” And I tell him Master Millus is fallen, yet three of us still stand, and Master Merlin too. And still he asks not if the errand is well finished, but talks of lakes and rivers, and now even of the sea, and it is all I can do to remember this is my old comrade, and a brave one, chosen like me by Arthur for this great task, even as a battle rages down in the valley. Does he forget his duty? I lift him, and he cries out to the heavens, and only then understands the cost even of a few small steps, and there we are, atop a red mountain in the summer heat, an hour’s journey even on horseback to the river. And as I lower him he talks now only of the sea. His eyes blind now, when I sprinkle water on his face from my gourd, he thanks me the way I suppose in his mind’s eye he stands upon a shore. “Was it sword or axe finished me?” he asks, and I say, “What do you talk of, comrade? It’s the she-dragon’s tail met you, but our task’s done and you depart with pride and honour.” “The she-dragon,” he says. “What’s become of the she-dragon?” “All but one of the spears rest in her flank,” I say, “and now she sleeps.” Yet he forgets the errand again, and talks of the sea, and of a boat he knew as a small boy when his father took him far from the shore on a kind evening.
When my own time comes, will I too long for the sea? I think I will be content enough with the soil. And I will not demand the exact spot, but let it be within this country Horace and I have spent the years roaming contentedly. Those dark widows of earlier would cackle to hear me, and hasten to remind me with what I may share my plot of earth. “Foolish knight! You above all need choose your resting place well, or find yourself a neighbour to the very ones you slaughtered!” Did they not make some such jest even as they threw mud at Horace’s rump? How dare they! Were they there? Can it be this woman now rides in my saddle would say as much if she could hear my thoughts? She talked of slaughtered babes down in that foul-aired tunnel, even as I delivered her from the monks’ black plans. How dare she? And now she sits in my saddle, astride my dear battlehorse, and who knows how many more journeys are left to Horace and me?
For a while we thought this might be our last, but I had mistaken this good couple for those others, and a while longer we travel in peace. Yet even as I lead Horace by the bridle, I must glance back, for surely they are coming, even if we go well ahead. Master Axl walks beside me, his goat forbidding him a steady step. Does he guess why I look back so often? “Sir Gawain, were we not comrades once?” I heard him ask it early this morning as we came out of the tunnel, and I told him to find a boat to go downstream. Yet here he is, still in the mountains, his good wife beside him. I will not meet his eye. Age cloaks us both, as the grass and weeds cloak the fields where we once fought and slaughtered. What is it you
seek, sir? What is this goat you bring?
“Turn back, friends,” I said when they came upon me in the woods. “This is no walk for elderly travellers like you. And look how the good mistress holds her side. Between here and the giant’s cairn there’s still a mile or more, and the only shelter small rocks behind which one must curl with bowed head. Turn back while you still have strength, and I’ll see this goat’s left at the cairn and tethered well.” But they both eyed me suspiciously, and Master Axl would not let go the goat. The branches rustled above, and his wife seated on the roots of an oak, gazing to the pond and the cracked trees stooping to water, and I said softly: “This is no journey for your good wife, sir. Why did you not do as I advised and take the river down out of these hills?” “We must take this goat where we promised,” says Master Axl. “A promise made to a child.” And does he look at me strangely as he says so, or do I dream it? “Horace and I will take the goat,” I say. “Will you not trust us with the errand? I hardly believe this goat will much trouble Querig even if devoured whole, yet she may be a little slowed and lend me an advantage. So give me the creature and turn back down the mountain before one or the other of you fall in your own footsteps.”
They moved then into the trees away from me, and I could hear the shape of their lowered voices, but no words. Then Master Axl comes to me and says: “A moment more for my wife to rest, then we will carry on, sir, to the giant’s cairn.” I see it is useless to argue more, and I also eager to continue on our way, for who knows how far behind is Master Wistan and his bitten boy?
Part IV
Chapter Fifteen
Some of you will have fine monuments by which the living may remember the evil done to you. Some of you will have only crude wooden crosses or painted rocks, while yet others of you must remain hidden in the shadows of history. You are in any case part of an ancient procession, and so it is always possible the giant’s cairn was erected to mark the site of some such tragedy long ago when young innocents were slaughtered in war. This aside, it is not easy to think of reasons for its standing. One can see why on lower ground our ancestors might have wished to commemorate a victory or a king. But why stack heavy stones to above a man’s height in so high and remote a place as this?
It was a question, I am sure, equally to baffle Axl as he came wearily up the mountain slope. When the young girl had first mentioned the giant’s cairn, he had pictured something atop a large mound. Yet this cairn had simply appeared before them on the incline, no feature around it to explain its presence. The goat, nonetheless, seemed immediately to sense its significance, struggling frantically as soon as the cairn had become visible as a dark finger against the sky. “It knows its fate,” Sir Gawain had remarked, guiding his horse up with Beatrice in the saddle.
But now the goat had forgotten its earlier dread and was chewing the mountain grass contentedly.
“Can it be Querig’s mist works its mischief on goats and men alike?”
It was Beatrice who asked this as she held with both hands the animal’s rope. Axl had for the moment relinquished the creature while he hammered into the ground with a stone the wooden stake around which the rope had been wound.
“Who knows, princess. But if God cares at all for goats, he’ll bring the she-dragon here before long, or it’ll be a lonely wait for this poor animal.”
“If the goat dies first, Axl, do you suppose she’ll still sup on meat not living and fresh?”
“Who knows how a she-dragon likes her meat? But there’s grass here to keep this goat a while, princess, even if it’s of a mean sort.”
“Look there, Axl. I thought the knight would help us, weary as we both are. But he’s forgotten his usual manners.”
Indeed Sir Gawain had become oddly reticent since their arrival at the cairn. “This is the place you seek,” he had said in an almost sulky voice, before wandering off. And now he stood with his back to them, staring at the clouds.
“Sir Gawain,” Axl called out, pausing from his work. “Will you not assist holding this goat? My poor wife grows tired from it.”
The old knight did not react, and Axl, assuming he had not heard, was about to repeat his request, when Gawain turned suddenly, and with such a look of solemnity, they both stared at him.
“I see them below,” the old knight said. “And nothing now to turn them.”
“Who is it you see, sir?” Axl asked. Then when the knight remained silent, “Are they soldiers? We watched earlier some long column on the horizon, but thought they moved away from us.”
“I speak of your recent companions, sir. The same with whom you travelled yesterday when we met. They emerge from the wood below, and who’ll stop them now? For a moment, I raised a hope I merely looked on two black widows strayed from that infernal procession. But it was the cloudy sky playing its tricks, and it’s them, no mistake.”
“So Master Wistan escaped the monastery after all,” Axl said.
“That he did, sir. And now he comes, and on his rope not a goat, but the Saxon boy to guide him.”
At last Sir Gawain seemed to notice Beatrice struggling with the animal and came hurriedly from the cliff edge to seize the rope. But Beatrice did not let go, and for a moment it was as if she and the knight were tussling for control of the goat. In time they stood steadily, both holding the rope, the old knight a step or two in front of Beatrice.
“And have our friends in turn seen us here, Sir Gawain?” Axl asked, returning to his task.
“I’ll wager that warrior has keen eyes, and sees us even now against the sky, figures in a tug contest, the goat our opponent!” He laughed to himself, but a melancholy lingered in his voice. “Yes,” he said finally. “I fancy he sees us well enough.”
“Then he joins forces with us,” Beatrice said, “to bring down the she-dragon.”
Sir Gawain looked from one to the other of them uneasily. Then he said: “Master Axl, do you still persist in believing it?”
“Believing what, Sir Gawain?”
“That we gather here in this forsaken spot as comrades?”
“Make your meaning clearer, sir knight.”
Gawain led the goat to where Axl was kneeling, oblivious of Beatrice following behind, still clutching her end of the rope.
“Master Axl, didn’t our ways part years ago? Mine remained with Arthur, while yours …” He seemed now to become aware of Beatrice behind him, and turning, bowed politely. “Dear lady, I beg you let go this rope and rest. I’ll not let the animal escape. Sit down beside the cairn there. It will shelter at least some part of you from this wind.”
“Thank you, Sir Gawain,” Beatrice said. “Then I’ll trust you with this creature, and it’s a precious one to us.”
She began to make her way towards the cairn, and something about the way she did so, her shoulders hunched against the wind, caused a fragment of recollection to stir on the edges of Axl’s mind. The emotion it provoked, even before he could hold it down, surprised and shocked him, for mingled with the overwhelming desire to go to her now and shelter her, were distinct shadows of anger and bitterness. She had talked of a long night spent alone, tormented by his absence, but could it be he too had known such a night, or even several, of similar anguish? Then, as Beatrice stopped before the cairn and bowed her head to the stones as if in apology, he felt both memory and anger growing firmer, and a fear made him turn away from her. Only then did he notice Sir Gawain also gazing over at Beatrice, a look of tenderness in his eyes, seemingly lost in his thoughts. But the knight soon collected himself, and coming closer to Axl, leant right down as though to remove any small chance of Beatrice overhearing.
“Who’s to say your path wasn’t the more godly?” he said. “To leave behind all great talk of war and peace. Leave behind that fine law to bring men closer to God. To leave behind Arthur once and for all and devote yourself to …” He glanced over again at Beatrice, who had remained on her feet, her forehead almost touching the piled stones in her effort to escape the wind. “To a good wife
, sir. I’ve watched how she goes beside you as a kind shadow. Should I have done the same? Yet God guided us down separate paths. I had a duty. Ha! And do I fear him now? Never, sir, never. I accuse you of nothing. That great law you brokered torn down in blood! Yet it held well for a time. Torn down in blood! Who blames us for it now? Do I fear youth? Is it youth alone can defeat an opponent? Let him come, let him come. Remember it, sir! I saw you that very day and you talked of cries in your ears of children and babes. I heard the same, sir, yet were they not like the cries from the surgeon’s tent when a man’s life is spared even as the cure brings agonies? Yet I admit it. There are days I long for a kind shadow to follow me. Even now I turn in hope to see one. Doesn’t every animal, every bird in the sky crave a tender companion? There were one or two I’d willingly have given my years. Why should I fear him now? I’ve fought fanged Norsemen with reindeer snouts, and they no masks! Here, sir, tie your goat now. How much deeper will you drive that stake? Is it a goat you tether or a lion?”
Handing Axl the rope, Gawain went striding off, not stopping till he stood where the land’s edge appeared to meet the sky. Axl, one knee pressed into the grass, tied the rope tightly around the notch in the wood, then looked once more over to his wife. She was standing at the cairn much as before, and though something in her posture again tugged at him, he was relieved to find in himself no trace of the earlier bitterness. Instead he felt almost overcome by an urge to defend her, not just from the harsh wind, but from something else large and dark even then gathering around them. He rose and hurried to her.
“The goat’s well secured, princess,” he said. “Just as soon as you’re ready, let’s be off down this slope. For haven’t we completed the errand promised to those children and to ourselves?”
“Oh Axl, I don’t want to go back to those woods.”
“What are you saying, princess?”