Bors looked at the young knight sceptically. "But won't that put you at risk?"
Alymere looked at him. It would have been easier to lie, but lies were the Devil's way. He was not one of his creatures now, so he summoned the courage to tell the truth. "Yes. But I know what I have to do. You will have to trust me. Please, my friend, do not fight me on this. Let me become the man I was always meant to be. Let me become someone my father — God rest his soul — can be proud of."
Bors nodded slowly, then grasped Alymere with both of his meaty hands and drew him into a fierce embrace.
He didn't let him go for a full minute. He whispered in Alymere's ear, "God be with you." And left him.
Bors did not return for hours.
The cell door opened twice before he did. The first time it was a young, gangly maid, come with a tray of food. The prisoner would get to eat a hearty meal, at least, before the king decided his judgment. She had long dirty blonde hair and round cheekbones, and a slightly elfin quality to her face, with bright blue eyes. She blinked against the darkness. The cutlery on the tray rattled against the plate. She looked as though she were wearing her mother's clothes, like she had just come into womanhood and was uncomfortable in her new body. There was something appealing about her gaze; something familiar.
"You look familiar. Tell me," Alymere said, taking the tray from her, "have we met before?"
"Yes, my lord, though in truth I did not expect you to recognise me like this."
"Where?"
"I was the May Queen this year. You cut me down from the Maypole so the men could carry me to the river."
He looked at her then, trying to see her properly in the low light.
He shook his head slowly. "What is your name, girl?"
It wasn't Blodyweth. It had never been Blodyweth.
She left him with the food, but he didn't touch a morsel of it. He sat on the edge of the cot, waiting for Sir Bors to return with the book.
The second time the door opened it was another one of the maids come to retrieve the tray. She looked down at the untouched plate, shrugged her shoulders as though to say suit yourself, and left him.
The torch burned out an hour later, leaving him alone in the dark.
It was deep in the night when the door finally opened a third time to let the big man in. He clutched the Devil's Bible close to his chest with one hand, and held a burning brand overhead with the other. The guard who had opened the cell door shrank back into the shadows. Alymere didn't move from the bed; for the longest time Bors simply stood silhouetted in the doorway, looking at him.
"Give it to me," Alymere said, looking up.
He didn't hold his hands out for it.
If he had, Bors would have been able to see him shaking.
The big man moved cautiously into the room and closed the door behind him with his foot. "I have it," he said unnecessarily.
Alymere felt a thousand warring emotions surge up within him then, this close to the book, but it was fear that won out. He closed his eyes.
"Leave it with me. I will do what has to be done."
"I don't know…"
"Trust me, please. This once. Trust me."
He couldn't look up. He couldn't meet the big man's gaze. He didn't want to remember him like this, clutching a burning brand in a dank cell. He wanted to remember him striding confidently through Camelot, flirting outrageously with Katherine, making Maeve the cook laugh by stealing food. Being larger than life. If he looked at Bors now, he knew he wouldn't be able to go through with it.
Bors put the Devil's Bible down on the bed beside Alymere.
"Be careful, lad."
"Don't worry about me, my friend. I know what I am doing. It is the only way."
Bors rested a hand on his shoulder. "I meant what I said last night. Roth, Corynn, Lowick, they would have been proud of you, lad."
"I hope so," Alymere said. When he looked up, tears were streaming down his face. The big man said nothing, but left him. He switched the brand for the burnt-out torch in the sconce, leaving Alymere the light.
Beside him, the book spoke straight into the darkness of his heart.
You can hear me, can't you, Alymere? You know I am still here. I am always in the darkness, and always will be. You can't escape me. You and I, we are one. Our time together is not over until I am done with you. You are my creature.
"No," Alymere said aloud. "I am your keeper. There is a difference."
He looked at the linen favour on his arm.
It was the last thing he ever saw.
With that, he lifted the brand from the wall and put his own eyes out, welcoming the darkness.
Fifty-Seven
Come dawn, Bors opened the door to the cell, unsure what he expected to find.
Alymere lay huddled in the corner of the room, clutching the Devil's Bible to his chest.
He looked up. Tears of blood caked his cheeks.
Bors stared at the young man's ruined eyes, unable to accept what he saw.
He rushed to Alymere's side, cradling him in his arms. "You foolish boy. What have you done?"
"What I had to," Alymere said, tilting his head unerringly toward Bors, as though, despite the deep holes where his ruined eyes lay, he could see him. "It is the only way. I cannot stop the voices, but no matter how seductive they become I can never read the book. He cannot crawl his way back inside me. I have won."
"But at what cost?" Bors said, aghast.
"It was the only way," Alymere repeated, remembering his promise to the Crow Maiden. There is nothing you could ask of me that I would not willingly do, without a second thought. This is what it meant, to be her champion. Sacrifice. The willing offering of everything he was and everything he could ever have been. "Now, one last favour, my friend."
"Anything. You need only ask," Bors said, unhesitant.
"Take me away from this place. Take me somewhere I will never see another living soul as long as I live. Take me to Medcaut."
Bors understood. Isolated, the book's vile voice could not worm its way inside another man. "And that will be the end of it? How will you live? How will you eat?"
"The book will sustain me," Alymere said, thinking of the blind monk, and finally understanding.
"And the Chalice? What of it?"
"It can't stay here."
Fifty-Eight
She was waiting for them in the forest. He did not need to see her to know she was there.
She smelled like summer.
"My champion," Blodyweth said. She leaned close, kissing his cheek, and he smiled. He could not help himself. Despite everything, despite the savagery of his wounds and the ugliness of the scars they left behind, she could still be tender towards him. Loving.
He offered her the Chalice. "The Kingdom of Summer is safe, my lady. I have kept my promise. I will live out all of my days doing so."
"I never doubted you, my love."
Here endeth the first part of the
Second Book of King Arthur
and his Noble Knights…
The Salisbury Manuscript
June, 2006. The vestry of the nine-hundred-year-old parish church of St. Barbara and St. Christopher in Salisbury has been in need of a new roof for years; swathes of irreplacable parish records have been destroyed by leaking rainwater, not to mention mould and the various pests which enter through the cracks to nest in the room. A collection, several church fetes and a fundraiser thrown by the local school have finally raised the?16,000 needed to carry out the repairs, and work starts in the beginning of August.
Before work can begin, the countless documents lying stacked and boxed at the rear of the room need to be removed, which has turned out to be a more complicated task than expected. Students from Salisbury University, working side by side with Church volunteers, need to open and inspect every box in situ, identify, index and catalogue every document, and transfer them to new, more secure archive boxes before removing them from the building. Many of the boxes haven't been opened in decades — some, according to Canon Arthur Drake, since before World War I — and few of Drake's forerunners made any attempt at organising them.