At the Crossing Places (19 page)

I
COULDN'T GET TO SLEEP. IN THE MIDDLE OF THE NIGHT
I unwrapped my stone.

“Wake up!” whispers Enid. “Erec! Wake up!”

Enid tells her husband of their host's intentions. Quickly they dress and creep out of their chamber through the hall. They saddle their horses and leave the sleeping castle.

Dawn breaks. The sun quickens and rises, and Enid reins in. She sits very still in the saddle and frowns. “Can you hear what I hear?” she asks.

“I've told you before,” Erec replies. “You're not to speak to me unless I speak to you first.”

Enid dismounts. She kneels and puts one ear to the ground. “Hooves galloping!” she cries. “Our host is following us. Not even you can fight one hundred men.”

“You do not love me, Enid,” Erec says. “How will others ever have faith in me if you do not trust me?”

The host leads the charge. He splits Erec's shield and drives his lance between Erec's chest and his right shoulder. But Erec's aim is no less accurate. His lance pierces the host's stomach and comes out through his back.

The host collapses in his saddle like a sack of onions, and his charger trots round in a circle and then pulls up.

The host stares at Erec with bulging eyes. “God's price!” he
croaks. He thrashes the air with his right hand. Now he tells his followers to allow Erec and Enid to go in peace.

On they go, but Erec is badly wounded. And when Enid turns round, she sees her husband hanging upside down with his head bumping on the ground.

Enid dismounts. She releases Erec's foot from the stirrup and lays his head in her lap. Over and again she kisses his blue lips. Her tears shine on his cheeks. “He's dead and it's my fault. I've murdered my own husband.”

Enid starts to sob. “I should never have told him what people were saying about him.”

Gently Enid lays Erec's head on the ground and now she draws his sword from its scabbard. She's very pale, and breathing in little gasps and stabs. She plants the pommel on the ground and places the point against her stomach, and leans into it.

“Stop!” shouts a voice, and a knight gallops right up to Enid. He grasps the sword and sheathes it in the scabbard strapped to Erec's wrist; and now he stoops and feels Erec's cold forehead.

“Stone-dead!” he announces. “So who are you? His wife or his mistress?”

Enid closes her eyes. “Both,” she whispers.

“Is that so?”

“Let me die.”

“Tut!” exclaims the knight. “The death of a knight is a pity, but yours would be a tragedy. I've a better idea.”

Enid settles beside Erec, graceful as a swan. She grasps his right shoulder and her purple cloak half-covers him.

“I'm Count Oringle,” the knight tells her, “and my castle's at
Limors. First, we'll carry your husband back to my castle and give him a Christian burial. And then, lovely lady, I think you should marry again.”

Count Oringle's no better than the host who threatened to pinion Erec and lop off his head. In fact, he's even worse. He's debauched. He is actually making advances to Enid in front of her own dead husband.

Enid isn't scared, though. There's a sharp stone in her heart: She aches all over.

“Let me die,” she says again.

Now I can see Count Oringle's hall. At the far end, Erec is lying on a table raised on wooden blocks, and Enid and Count Oringle are standing beside him.

“Right!” says the count. “A dead man can wait! Time's for the living, and it's high time we were married.”

Enid looks at Oringle with eyes of stone.

“Chaplain!” calls the count. “Say your words. Pronounce us man and wife.”

The chaplain recites the sacred words and now Count Oringle puts his mouth to Enid's ear. “You were poor, my lady,” he whispers, “and now you're rich. You were a nobody and now you're a countess.”

“I wish I were dead,” says Enid. “I won't eat or drink. I'll fast until I die.”

“We'll see about that,” says the count.

“In no way will I satisfy you,” Enid says.

The count claps his hands, and servants bring in steaming dishes: pike and perch and salmon and trout. The count himself arranges little pieces on Enid's plate.

Enid won't touch it, though. Not one mouthful.

“If you refuse to eat the next course,” the count tells her, “you'll get what you deserve.”

But Enid ignores the count's threats. She refuses all the grilled and stewed meats.

At once the count stands up and smacks Enid across the face.

“Sir!” protests the chaplain. “You can't expect her to eat in front of her dead husband.”

All down the table Count Oringle can hear his household protesting. He listens and smiles. “This woman's mine,” he says. “I'll do exactly as I like with her.”

Erec's fingertips, they're beginning to twitch. His eyelids, they're flickering. He's alive! Erec's alive! Now he opens one eye. Both eyes. Several times he blinks. He must be working out where he is and why he's lying on his back on a cold stone slab.

Here come more servants, carrying slices of date, ginger waffles, and sweet cheese tart.

“This is your last chance, Countess Enid!” shouts Oringle. “Either you eat or I'll force your little mouth open and stuff your gullet.”

Erec feels for his sword. It is still strapped to his wrist. He fingers the pommel, he grasps it. And now in one movement he unsheathes it and swings himself down from the raised table.

The count's household all leap to their feet. The long benches topple over backwards. Men yell, women shriek, and Erec staggers straight towards the count. He swings his sword and swipes the side of the count's head with the flat of the blade. He beats his brains into a pancake.

All the count's household are punching and scratching one another, fighting to get through the hall doors.

“He's a devil!”

“A demon!”

“The dead man's after us!”

Away they go now, Erec and Enid—away they gallop, on one horse. Erec wraps his arms tight around his wife. He presses his heart against her.

“Our journey's over,” he whispers. “I'll test you no further.”

“I only disobeyed you because I love you,” says Enid.

“I know how you love me. And I love you. Every knight and lady at Camelot will hear of our adventure.”

“How could I have doubted you?” whispers Enid.

The light in my stone shivered, it faded; the stone grew cold, as if there were no life in it…

Enid was meek yet stubborn. It's just as she said: Erec needed her. They needed each other.

Not all women are like that. Lady Judith's not meek. She speaks her mind. She argues. So does Winnie! It's a good thing Erec wasn't married to her.

I think Erec's friends were right in a way. Because of his passion, he turned his back on his duties as a knight. Overseeing his estate. Serving at court. Protecting the defenseless. And fighting in the field, as Lord Stephen and I are going to do. But if he has to be away from home so often and for so long, how can a man be a true knight without dishonoring his marriage? And how can a loving husband ever be a good knight?

Y
OU WANTED TO TELL ME,” WINNIE BEGAN, “AND IT
was important.”

“What?”

“About Gortanore. When we went hare hunting.”

I swallowed, and stared at my damp bundle of golden Saint-John's-wort.

“Come on!” said Winnie.

“You know Sir William's my father?”

“And Grace is your half sister. That's why you can't be betrothed.”

“But my mother—”

“Who is she?”

“I don't know. I don't even know how to find out.”

“Ask Sir William, then,” said Winnie, and she laughed.

“I can't. When we met and talked, as father and son, he kept barking and shouting at me. He raised his fist.”

“But she's your own mother.”

“I am going to find out,” I said. “I am.”

“Everyone needs to know who their own mother is,” Winnie said indignantly. “We have to know. I'm going to help you.”

“How?”

“I don't know. Yes, I do. My father can find out. He will if I ask him.”

“That's much too dangerous.”

“Why?” asked Winnie.

“I can't tell you everything. Sir William warned me not to start digging things up, and I know he'll do everything he can to stop people from finding out the whole story. If they did, he'd be hanged!”

“Really?” exclaimed Winnie.

“And Lady Alice and Tom and Grace would have to leave Gortanore.”

“I know,” said Winnie brightly. “I can talk to Tom. He'll help us.”

“No!” I said in alarm. “He doesn't even know Sir William has named me as his heir.”

“Instead of him, you mean?”

“Tom will inherit two manors and I will have the third. But we haven't even talked about it yet.”

I could feel my mother's ring in my pocket and I kept wondering whether to show it to Winnie. I wanted to so much. But I could hear Thomas, warning me—I could see him drawing his fingers across his throat.

“Do you know what Sir William said?” I asked Winnie. “‘When people start digging, they may find their own bones.'”

“That's a black threat,” said Winnie fiercely, and then she shivered. “I'm glad my father's not like that. Come on! We'd better take this wort back to the hall.”

This evening, Winnie and I built a little stone chamber on the scrubland beyond the archery butts, and stowed all the wort into it. Its golden eyes shone in the gloom. And then the people who live on Sir Walter's manor made a cocoon around it of hawthorn
cuttings and beech branches, and set light to them. The wood spat—the flames danced.

Sir Walter rubbed his hands. “So you didn't step on any,” he said.

“What if we had?” I asked.

“On Saint John's Eve?” said Sir Walter. And then he called out, “Judith! Arthur's asking what would happen if he stepped on Saint-John's-wort.”

Lady Judith advanced on us. “Our parents said,” she told me, “that the ground could open and a horseman rise under us. He gallops you all night until you're far from home, and then he vanishes.”

“Well, I'm still here,” I said, grinning. “Do you believe that, my lady?”

“Why shouldn't I?” Lady Judith replied. “Saint-John's-wort is the most magical plant of all. It drives away all kinds of evil. Dark elves. Demons. Witches.”

“What I think,” said Sir Walter, “is that it's wise to respect the old beliefs. That prayer Lord Stephen said after we caught the hare: ‘We're one fellowship…' Do you remember? Humans and animals, plants and trees as well. We're all one fellowship. We can use them as we need them, but we must respect them with the old words and the old customs.”

“That's what Nain says,” I told Sir Walter. “She's Welsh and thinks that when trees whisper and sigh, they're the voices of the dead.”

In the firelight, Sir Walter took my right elbow and squeezed it warmly. I like the way he listens to me.

“Winnie!” Sir Walter called. “Come over here! As soon as
you wake up, I want you and Arthur to lift all the wort out of the chamber.”

“I know,” said Winnie.

“And put a good handful beside each outside door.”

“The hall door, the kitchen door, the door to the armory,” Winnie recited, “the doors to the stables and each cow stall…”

“What would I do without you?” murmured Sir Walter, and he quietly withdrew into the darkness.

“He knows I know,” said Winnie, tossing her head, “but that doesn't stop him telling me.”

“You will be sure to save plenty of wort for me?” Lady Anne said. “Winnie?”

“Yes, mother.”

“Lady Helen uses it for melancholy,” I said.

“So do we,” Lady Anne said. “And nerves. And to kill pain. All kinds of things.”

Lady Anne and Sir Walter and Lady Judith stepped into the hall, and Winnie tugged on my left sleeve.

“Arthur!” she whispered.

“What?”

In the darkness, I could see her eyes shining.

“What is it?”

Winnie looked at me forever. Then, all at once, she laid her hands on my shoulders, leaned forward, and kissed me right on my mouth.

“Winnie!” called Lady Anne.

“Coming!” Winnie shouted. “If you tell anyone,” she whispered in my ear, “I'll vanish for a year and a day!”

“Where are you?” Lady Anne called again.

“Hurry up, Arthur!” Winnie said loudly. And then she skipped into the hall.

“Now!” said Lady Anne. “I've saved this sprig.” She gave the glistening flower to Winnie. “Put it under your pillow, and when you dream, you'll see the man you're going to marry.”

W
HEN I STARED DEEP INTO THE SAINT JOHN'S EVE
fire tonight, I could see a flame-giant, wilder by far than Edric. I saw the gardens of paradise and scathing, hissing demons. Oringle's hot eyes, and the pure white flame of love.

It's often like this. Even when I stare into a hearth fire, it's somehow like staring into myself. I can see good and evil. I'm a battleground, dragged this way, dragged that way—a wishbone, unable to break.

I'm not mad! At least, I don't think I am.

Anyhow, Nain told me that madness and knowledge are twin sisters, and sometimes we have to think wild thoughts before we truly understand.

“Cader Idris,” she said.

“What's that?”

“The mountain. If you climb that and stay on top until midnight, you'll turn mad or become a great poet.”