"Good King Arthur after the crucifixion of Our Lord... was a puissant King, and one that well believed in God, and many were the good adventures that befel at his court. And he had in his court the Table Round that was garnished of the best knights in the world. King Arthur after the death of his father led the highest life and most gracious that ever king led, in such sort that all the princes and all the barons took ensample of him in well-doing.
For ten years was King Arthur in such estate as I have told you, nor never was earthly king so praised as he, until that a slothful will came upon him and he began to lose the pleasure in doing largesse that he wont to have, nor was he minded to hold court neither at Christmas-tide nor at Easter nor at Pentecost…
Queen Guenievre was so sorrowful thereof that she knew not what counsel to take with herself, nor how she might so deal as to amend matters, so God amended them not…"
- Anonymous Old French Romance, Perceval le Gallois ou le conte du Graal, c. 1200 AD. English Translation Sebastian Evans, 1898.
Sixteen years ago
"Arthur! Arthur! Why are you down 'ere, you obstinate boy? Come back to your lessons."
Sister Flavia appeared in the doorway of the crypt, her handsome face flushed with the exertion of wandering the castle, her veil askew.
"It's Arthur, Sister Flavia," the prince said stubbornly. ""Arrthurr," he repeated, trilling the r's. "Not Aghtugh." The good Sister, like many Normans with Frankish as their first language, had trouble making r's with her tongue, instead pronouncing them at the back of her throat.
"Ah!" said Sister Flavia, a glint coming into her eye. "Will you mock me, you saucy boy? You may not correct my Cambric pronunciation, while your own Frankish leaves so much to be desired! Have you been practising your conjugation of parler, as you promised you would? Come now. Je parle, tu parles, il parle, elle parle..."
Arthur, who was sick to death of the word parle, turned back to the heavy marble coffer he had been examining. "Whose tomb is this?" he asked, intrigued by the sculpted image of a knight with a greatsword, and the diverse other military accoutrements adorning the grave.
The Sister, who had been sweeping towards Arthur, hesitated, stopping short of the great stone case. She seemed reluctant to frame a reply at first, but then she relented. Arthur knew Sister Flavia approved of him asking questions about the castle, for she wished him to learn his history one way or another, and he had often escaped from his language lessons by diverting his tutor in this manner. She said, in sombre tones, "This is the grave of Sir Tristan. Le Chevalier Noir, they called him."
"Why does he have such a huge ossuary? Surely his bones couldn't be that big. Was he a giant?"
"Sir Tristan was a big man, but he was no giant. The coffin is so large because his entire body is kept here."
"What?" said Arthur. "Why didn't he get a ship burial? Is it because he didn't die in battle? Was he a coward, who died lying in bed, with the blankets pulled up to his chin, like a woman?"
If Sister Flavia was offended by the slight against the courage of her sex, she did not show it, for she was accustomed to the prejudices of her time, and shared in not a few of them herself.
"Sir Tristan was no coward!" said she. "He died as he had lived, acquitting himself with honour on the field of combat. But he spurned the ship burial which was his right. Such was his devotion to the New Religion, he rejected the burial in Water and Fire of our ancestors, and chose to be interred in the Earth from which God made us. For as the Good Book says of mankind, 'Pulvis es, et in pulverem reverteris,' that is, 'Dust thou art, and unto dust thou shalt return.' You would know that if you had applied yourself to your Scripture lessons!
"Besides which, Sir Tristan had been a Crusader, and the loss of the Holy Land to the Saracens wounded him deeply. It was his firm conviction that as a Soldier of the Cross, he must not leave the Earth and abandon his post, until the Holy Tomb had been recaptured from the infidels. He gave orders before his passing that his body should be placed in the soil, there to sleep until the Archangel Gabriel sounds the trumpet blast at the End of Days, whereupon the Defenders of the Cross will waken once more and march into the Holy Land…"
Fascinated by the images Sister Flavia's words conjured up, Arthur found himself staring at the cold stone box in this dank crypt, all inside a sealed basement of the castle. A cobwebbed mausoleum did not seem a fitting resting place for such a pious and heroic man, whose life had been filled with warlike faith and manly vigour.
Eventually, Arthur asked, "Do you think we will ever reconquer the Holy Land from the Saracens?"
"If God wills it," said Sister Flavia. "However, be cautious when revelling in the feats of the Crusaders, my prince. These holy knights are noble men, whose strong arms have safeguarded the lands of the True Faith. But the military forces of Mother Church have grown so vast that some men are in danger of forgetting her true purpose. Our knights and princes have turned conquerors, and the hearts of our people have been quickly inflamed to war. Too often we forget that we were called to serve the Prince of Peace.
"The true enemy is not the proud Saracen or the haughty Turk. These are, after all, but fellow men, made of the same Earth from which our Creator sculpted us. The true Enemy is much closer to home than the East. There are many knights who are eager to fight the Deceiver if he wears a Saracen's turban, but they are unable to recognise him when he gazes back at them from the looking-glass. They have forgotten that the higher Crusade, a private one, is waged inside the battlefield of our own hearts. Swift to declare war on enemy kings, they have never thought to wage war against their own evil natures or their darker impulses. And there is darkness within every soul, my prince."
Round-eyed, Arthur asked, "What do you mean?"
"I mean, Arthur, that one day you will be king. You will be forced to fight many wars, and you have been trained to martial pursuits since birth. But on that first dreadful day when the darkness of the soul falls upon you, you will find your military weapons quite useless. Only spiritual arms will benefit you then. In preparation for that day, you must gird yourself with the armour of the Lord. Take up the lance of Justice and the shield of Mercy. Put on the breastplate of Faith and inscribe upon it the name of He Who Saves.
"You will have no earthly companions with you on that long campaign, for each man goes on the plains of suffering alone, as our Lord did in the desert. But when the Enemy comes upon you in that valley of death's shadow, take heart, and call upon the Apostles and the Holy Virgin, and they will instantly be by your side. These blessed souls remained beside the Saviour during His earthly torment, and washed and bound the wounds He suffered for our sakes, so they will surely not leave you either.
"And one day, when you wear the crown of Camelot, Arthur, remember that it is the peacemakers who are blessed, not the warmongers. When your earls and knights urge you to shed the blood of your enemies, remember another King who shed His blood so that all men might live… "
"I will remember," Arthur promised. He looked at the tomb again. "Do you really think Sir Tristan will rise up and fight again?"
"Assuredly he will," said Sister Flavia. "A knight's word is his bond, and he may not put down the burden of his duty, even in death. All things are possible with faith."
And that, at least, had turned out to be true. For Sister Flavia had been right: the Black Knight did ride again. And it was faith that raised him, though it was a cruel irony that a High Priestess, serving the Goddess of the Old Religion, should reanimate a body which in life had burned only for the Holy Cross.
Afterwards, when Arthur learnt the truth of all that had occurred, he felt an all too familiar guilt. It was because of him that the Black Knight had first died, and because of him that Tristan du Bois was raised from the dead and killed again. That second time, an enchanted sword had totally destroyed the Black Knight's body, scattering him into countless particles of dust. Dust thou art, and to dust thou shalt return. What would that mean for Sir Tristan on the Day of Resurrection? Surely God could give the knight a new body? But would the Nazarin God accept the soul of a man whose body had been so cruelly used, raised with forbidden magics, then defiled beyond recognition? Was Arthur responsible for his uncle being denied the company of the Heavenly Martyrs?
On some nights, in his dreams, Arthur felt he had entered the plains Sister Flavia had spoken of, and witnessed that battlefield of the soul's twilight. On those nights he saw the shade of Tristan du Bois accusing him, along with all the others Arthur had wronged: Druid children, witches burned at the stake, men wrongly executed. The victims of the Pendragon kings were numberless, and they formed up against Arthur like an opposing army. And facing them, Arthur rode alone, armed with nothing but his faltering faith. He did as Sister Flavia had instructed, and called upon the Holy Saints and the Mother of God, but his prayers were hollow and insincere things, shouted into an empty sky, and no one answered him.
It was just as his father had always said: in the end, a king stood alone.
On a grassy field, the dragon hunters waited.
In the fore were a company of mercenaries, arrayed in battle formation. Some ways behind them were the Norman forces, consisting of the knights brought by Earl Gallien and Prince Edward, while surrounding this host, like the three petals of the fleur-de-lys, were the Saxons, Danes and Cambricmen.
"Well, King Arthur," called Earl Gallien. "I have heard that your House has much experience in dragon slaying. Perhaps your presence will turn the tide for us. Else we have all ridden to the slaughter."
"I have fought a dragon," Arthur replied. "Or rather, endured a siege from one. A dragon cannot be directly assaulted, any more than one can charge a thunderstorm or rout the whirlwind. A dragon ravaged my city, in which we had the advantage of stone walls for shelter, and battlements from which to launch strikes, and we still lost many lives. To confront one on an open plain is sheer folly."
"What!" scoffed Simon, the mercenary captain. "Is the Dragon King so unmanned by a mere lizard, the emblem of his House, which should be subject to him?"
"How curious," said Earl Gallien's diviner, Charinus, a holy man in occult robes of a singular aspect, "that the King of Camelot counsels us against assailing this dragon. Did he not pledge every assistance in defeating it?"
"Indeed I did," said Arthur. "And it were for that reason I would not have us cast away our lives needlessly. An enemy this ancient and powerful requires a careful stratagem to overcome it, and every man living we can spare."
The leader of the Danes, a gigantic warrior with fair, braided hair, said, "The Dragon King speaks true. We were hired for our dragon-knowing, and we call this folly. These beasts are cunning, and may only be defeated by those mightily skilled, heroic, or kissed by the gods. Ride to heroic deaths, if you will, but the gods love not stupid men. And no man shall call us cowards for these words, not without feeling my war-axe against his skull."
Captain Simon did not seem pleased by these words. "Perhaps if you had employed your 'dragon-knowing' sooner, Vyking, there would be no need for us to take the field in our folly. How many nights have you passed here? And yet the beast remains."
"Dragons are not easy prey," said the great Dane. "They are not like companies of you Southmen, weaklings to be scattered by a beardless boy. No, they are quarries who deserve respect, and the proper forms must be observed when approaching them."
"By the time your proper forms have been observed, all the North will be ash, and no soul will be alive to pay your fee," said the captain.
Another man-at-arms in the mercenary company called from the front ranks, "Captain! It comes!"
A sudden stillness went over the assembled troops. Archers nocked arrows and drew their strings, awaiting the command that must follow, and every eye was turned to the blue sky above the dancing tree branches.
"Ha!" the Dane leader said to those close to him, in the silence. "Now we shall see how these southern Britons fight against the Wyrm."
Arthur felt the ground trembling beneath his feet, as though a great train of horses were galloping by. Birds erupted from the forest around him and winged away, crying in alarm.
A roar went up, a sound Arthur had never heard before, not even from the Great Dragon of Camelot. It had something of the snarling of a woodland beast in it, like a gigantic bear, and something of the blasting of trumpets. Within it there were even deafening notes of music, as if that roar were sung by a gigantic human tongue. If an Angel watching the crucifixion of the Lord had screamed its throat hoarse in a cry of fury, that sound might have approached what Arthur heard.
The dragon burst into view, its gigantic golden bulk springing out of the treeline and into the air with the ease of a falcon launching itself from a glove. The sight of a creature so vast moving with such unnatural velocity struck a terror into Arthur he could not remember feeling before.
Cries arose from all around him and, recovering himself, he took aim at the beast and released an arrow. A cloud of projectiles were loosed into the sky from the ranks of men, flying at the dragon like a swarm of wasps seeking to assault the heavens. Even as he shot, Arthur knew it would be futile; even so, he fumbled in his quiver for another arrow.
The dragon opened its mouth and issued forth a thin mist, and the hail of arrows was blasted away and shattered into fragments, which rained down upon the company. Folding its wings, the beast dived suddenly and alighted at the edge of the treeline, its sinuous body slinking like a cat's.
Now that Arthur had recovered from his initial shock, the sight of the beast was beginning to register with him. The first thing he noticed was its enormous size, for it appeared twice as large as the Great Dragon of Camelot. Its colour was different also, its scales flashing with myriad hues of amber, flame-colour, and honey, which moved about its body like living fire. Its skin glimmered like the surface of a treasure-hoard under torchlight. Even from this distance, Arthur could see the glare of its enormous yellow eyes, which had an eldritch power to them as they roamed over the men on the field.
Somehow, Arthur knew that he would tremble if that gaze fell directly upon him.
And then the dragon spoke.
Its jaws opened, and a sound came forth, but each man standing there heard something different, whether his native tongue was Cambric, Saxon, Frankish or otherwise. The dragon's voice did not merely vibrate the air with the force of its passing: it buffeted their very minds, imprinting sensations and images, forcing words upon their perceptions that could not be denied.
"I smell Norsemen!" the dragon thundered. "I smell Norsemen!" she cried, shaking her scaly neck, pacing from side to side. "I smell the frost in their veins, the stink of their animal furs! I smell their cunning linden-wood shields, the stench of hot springs on their bodies. I smell the Dragonslayers' blades they carry, and the runes of the All-Father they wear! Have they come south in pursuit of me, carrying the raven banners of Old One-Eye, my people's foe?"
The wind changed direction, and the dragon stopped suddenly, her tail lashing. When she spoke again, her voice was at an even greater pitch.
"I smell Pendragons!" she bellowed. "I can taste the Old Kings of Cambria in the air! Those cross-bred mules with the blood of Man and Faery in their veins, which brought so much malice into the world... Did they think I would forget that stink of treachery? Has the son of Uther Dragonsbane come before me? Is this the spawn of that hatchling-slayer, that smasher of eggs, who dared to take a dragon as his own standard, even as he watered his fields with our blood? Oh, this joyous day! I will sate my jaws with the flesh of all my kind's killers!"
The terrible yellow gaze of the dragon passed over the crowd, and somehow her great eyes found Arthur's. It was as the prince had feared: he felt the force of that glance piercing him like a javelin, pinning him to the spot. His limbs were paralysed, and he struggled to draw breath, as though the dragon's look alone had the power to crush his chest in a vice.
For the next few moments the dragon was silent, perhaps because her attention was fixed on Arthur. The vacuum left by the absence of her massive voice seemed to give the world a chance to draw breath, and the assembled men to recollect their senses.
Simon, the captain of the mercenaries, recovered enough to cry out, "What? Does the beast imitate the speech of men? How can this be?"
This was a mistake, for the dragon instantly turned from Arthur to the unhappy captain.
"Wretched ape," she hissed at him. "I, imitate the speech of men? I, whose grand-dames spoke Words of Power while your people had not emerged from caves? Insect! A candle will teach the Sun to shine before Mankind schools me in the grunting they call speech! You comprehend me because I dull my voice enough for your dead minds to grasp snatches of my meaning - but no. I will show you.
"Hear my True Speech, unclean ape. Hear but two words of it. You may not pronounce them, but in your backwards tongue they mean Fire and Wind. These are the Elements from which my kind was born, and they are most sacred to us, for we were not made to root in the Earth like pigs and men. Hearken!"
And the dragon opened her jaws, and spoke two words in the Dragontongue.
The vastness of the dragon's voice had shaken them previously, but what she spoke now was more potent still. It was as though she had merely been brushing against the edges of their minds before, and now she pulled back the veil of their perceptions and allowed some of the raw power of her own burning will to flood in.
Prior to this, Arthur thought he had understood what Fire and Wind meant. He had been mistaken. He had seen fire, from burning hearths to blazing forests, and even the great fire of the Sun. He had felt the gentle breeze, and been driven before storms and violent gales as he rode in the woods. Yet what the dragon spoke of now was the essence of those elements, and for a mercifully brief moment, Arthur felt his mind grasp those concepts with a tiny fraction of the understanding the dragonkind had of them.
It was a wonder his intellect did not fracture at the force of what it was compelled to feel. It seemed he had been raised in a darkened cellar all his life, and now, without warning, thrust into the glare of the midsummer sun. His inner eyes were blinded. He felt like an ant given the whole weight of a human being's experience - wouldn't its entire body strain under the weight of a single human thought? This must be how it would feel for a human being to be burdened with the understanding of an Angel, or to touch the very mind of God!
The senses of dragons were many times sharper than those of men, their minds vaster, more agile and powerful beyond imagining. They lived for centuries, saw further than Man who lived but a season, understood more deeply than him, and grasped the true essences of things, for by their nature they could not be deceived.
As Arthur caught a glimpse of this dragon's inner life, he was filled with horror anew, for it lent a fresh perspective to his father's wars against their kind. Uther had thought he was ridding the world of evil, but how could creatures of such exquisite sensitivity, situated above Man on the ladder of Creation, be an affront to the Heavens? Man called himself made in the image of the Creator, yet to the dragons, men must seem like mayflies, living for a day, crushed by the merest flap of their wings. To the dragons it must seem that they were given dominion over all other beings, and that their birthright was to rule over all.
If a man's thoughts were but a single voice, the dragon's resounded as a celestial choir, echoing with harmonies and antiphonies that bewildered the human spirit. And this was merely one creature. Had each dragon been like this, a nation unto itself, a soul filled with the wisdom of centuries and the memories of an entire kingdom? If so, what had his father done by killing a whole race of such beings, born from a nature elder to and wiser than Man's? What violence had Uther done to the world, by plucking out such a rare thread in God's Creation, and pulling on it until His tapestry had unravelled, so that Uther could reweave the landscape anew?
With a shudder, Arthur remembered how Gaius had told him the dragons were creatures of the Old Religion. The Old Religion. A phrase that, to the people of Camelot, conjured up only evil things, witches and blood sacrifices and phantoms of the night. And yet now, even with this dragon menacing them, Arthur could see there was transcendent beauty in this creature's existence, as well as eldritch terror. How could something this awe-inspiring be born of evil? This was what Merlin had spoken of, when he said the Old Religion flowed where life was greater than itself, where the world vibrated with energy beyond the ordinary. This was what Bishop Rhodri had explained, when he said that St Augustine had allowed there was goodness and wisdom to be found in the righteous pagans of Old, who glimpsed God's beauty and strove towards truth and wisdom, although they had lived and died outside the Faith.
But it was one thing to be told of these truths; quite another to experience them firsthand. The dragon's burning consciousness had torn a veil of darkness from Arthur's mind. Its gaze had pierced his soul, just as that flaming cherub had thrust its spear into the bosom of Blessed St Teresa, scorching the darkness from her heart. So too the dragon had filled Arthur's mind with pain, even while expanding his awareness beyond the human.
But if all those arrayed on that field had their spirits shaken by the dragon's voice, the mercenaries standing directly before her were especially unfortunate. For as the dragon opened her jaws and spoke in her native tongue, the Words leaving her mouth became the Elements themselves. And if the minds of men were ill-equipped to bear the voices of dragons, men's bodies were more fragile still.
A torrent of fire exploded from the dragon's mouth. Fanned by an eldritch wind, the flames expanded into an inferno, which set the field ablaze. In an instant, Arthur's mind was turned from thoughts of Heaven to those of Hell. He had seen the horrors of war before, but never like this.
Three quarters of the men in the mercenary company were consumed by the flame. Those closest to the dragon crumbled to ash instantly, while the others, less fortunate, had time to feel the skin slough from their bones, their flesh char, their vital humours boil and evaporate in a matter of heartbeats. It took a moment for the sounds and smells of the incinerated men to reach the other warriors, fanned by that unnatural wind. Suddenly, the stench of burning meat, the screams of terrified men and horses, and an overpowering aroma of charcoal assaulted their senses.
Most of the remaining ranks of soldiers broke and turned to flee instantly. The carnage was so terrible, so outside of the realm of their experience, that horror drove them out of their senses. The most sadistic priest, schooled in the verses of fire and brimstone, could not have designed such a vivid picture of the Inferno with which to terrify the faithful.
Arthur watched the tableau of Hellfire with a sinking heart. He longed to turn and flee with the others, but he could not. From the dragon's perspective, this was just retribution, for hadn't her kind been slaughtered by men? But all that had been the doing of Arthur's House. These men were innocent. They were not the ones against whom the dragon bore a grudge.
Now is the time to screw your courage to the sticking-place.
It was too late to make peace with the dragons now. Perhaps if Merlin were here, he could have communicated with them, found a more peaceful way, as he had always advocated. But Arthur had no power to reason with this dragon, which was yet another evil consequence born from his father's aggression. Would the cycle of vengeance continue forever, as it had with the Druids?
Knowing that death awaited him, knowing that the battle was even more futile than it had been at the start, Arthur holstered his crossbow, dressed his lance, and spurred his courser into a gallop.
"What are you doing?" shouted the Dane leader. "You have heart, Young Dragon! Will you throw your life away?"
"To me!" Arthur shouted. "Those who would die facing this threat rather than with their backs turned, to me! If St George, the patron of dragonslayers is with us, may he grant us the victory! For the love of Camelot!"
Amazingly, Arthur's cry brought some riders rallying around him. He was aware of his own knights and Cabricmen riding behind him, then the Danes keeping pace with him, some of the Saxons trailing behind, and then even some of the haughty Normans
Poor fools, thought Arthur, following me to their deaths. But it is better this way. One should never die with his back to the Fiend.
"For the love of Camelot!" shouted the knights and Cambricmen, echoing Arthur's cry.
"The Young Dragon!" shouted the Dane leader, while the Saxons added their voices: "St George! St George for Merry Angland!" And then came the Norman battle cries: "En avant! En avant pour Edward le Bel!"
A wedge of knights, with Arthur at their point like an arrowhead, flew across the ashen field towards the golden dragon.
The beast saw their approach and settled down on her forepaws, her eyes narrowed into slits of pleasure. She looked like a cat watching the approach of a phalanx of field-mice.
"Yes, come to me, Pendragon," she said, "like a moth to flame. Ride into the maw of death, and rejoice, for soon you will be burning with your father in Tartarus."
When they were less than half a furlong from the beast, she opened her mouth again.
"Scatter!" shouted Arthur, and the riders around him did so, some of them loosing arrows and other missiles as they veered away. Arthur did not alter his course, however, seeking to draw the dragon's wrath.
She unleashed a blast of flame at him, and Arthur, knowing he had no means of protection, simply rode into the oncoming fire, intending to go out with courage, if nothing else. But at the last instant the Dane leader charged into Arthur, diverting his horse.
"No!" cried Arthur, as the Northman launched himself from his steed, and was swallowed up in the blaze of fire meant for Arthur. But when the flames died, the mighty Dane was unharmed, his body sheltered behind a vast shield, which somehow had the power to stand up against dragonflame.
"You are valiant, Youngwyrm!" said the Dane. "Value your life more highly."
"Cunning!" said the dragon. "Cunning are the children of All-Father! But I will not be cheated of my prey!"
In a clatter of wings she arose, and the draughts from her wingbeats flattened man and horse alike. Landing beside Arthur, the dragon batted Danes, Saxons, and Cambricmen away, clearing the space around her and the king of Camelot.
"This is for my unhatched kin, Pendragon," she said, "for the broken shells that cried out to me as I lay dreaming." And she spat a gout of golden flame at him.
Arthur closed his eyes and bowed his head. If this is the sentence Providence has passed against me for my father's sins, let it stand, he thought, and waited to die.
But the pain never came. When Arthur opened his eyes, the dragonfire flared before him, unable to touch him, as though he were protected by an invisible veil, shielding him from heat and light. When the flames finally died away, the dragon had lost interest in Arthur. Her head swivelled around on her sinuous neck and her nostrils flared, and Arthur followed the direction of her gaze.
A grey mare galloped on the battlefield, and on her back rode an old man crowned with a mane of white hair, which flowed into his long white beard. He held a staff of power aloft in his hand, and it glowed and crackled with eldritch power.
The dragon lashed her tail and flapped her wings.
"Emrys!" she bellowed.