“Arthur? Why do you wait for him? Do you bear letters for him, too? And have you been carrying them about with you for a year and more?”
I smiled. “No, no letters for him. But for years I have been hearing much about Arthur Pendragon from Bishop Germanus, who heard of him through Merlyn and developed a correspondence with him personally when the king was but a boy. And now that my mission for the Bishop is complete and the bishop himself is dead, I intend to offer my sword and my services to Arthur, if he will have me.”
“Oh, he will have you. Never fear on that.”
Something in the way he spoke the words prompted me to ask, “You sounded very positive when you said that. How can you be so sure?”
He grinned again. “Because I know. I can speak without fear on behalf of the Riothamus when I say he needs good and loyal men. You said you brought friends with you?”
I nodded, “Aye, two of them, Perceval and Tristan. They are brothers. And we have a fourth with us, a servant lad called Bors, who has the makings of a fine warrior.”
“Hmm. And what of Perceval and … what was the other’s name? Tristan?”
“Aye, what mean you, what of them?”
“Are they fighters?”
I laughed, a single bark. “Do you mean will they measure up sufficiently to be acceptable to your Riothamus? Aye, they’re fighters and they’ll stand up to anyone. Both are mercenaries of long standing and of the highest order, and they’re nobly born. Had they been with me when I chanced along here, we would have taken on all of you.”
“Hmm.” The Magister grunted again and smiled, “Tell me your name again, if you will?”
“Clothar.”
“Aye, Clothar.” He nodded, slowly, repeating it almost beneath his breath, “Clothar. It is … different. I’ve never heard that name before.”
“It is common enough where I come from, and it is purely Frankish. Am I permitted to ask your name?”
He grinned and looked me in the eye, showing me his white, even teeth. “If I tell you my name will you show me the secret of your spears?”
I knew he was baiting me, gulling me in some manner, but I could not see how and I shook my head, smiling still, but now uncertain of what was happening here. “I have already said I would. I said so before we fought.”
“That’s true, you did.” He drew himself up straight and drew in an enormous breath, and his smile was open and completely forthright. “Come then, return to Camulod with us and make me known to these friends of yours, Tristan and Perceval, who have come so far with you to join the Riothamus. I am Arthur Pendragon, and men—some men—call me Riothamus, High King of Britain. But Riothamus, no matter who says it, is a mere title. I have yet to earn the right to it, to fill in the truth behind it, and I fear I have a long way to go before I can admit to the name without feeling inadequate.”
He paused, and then nodded his head once, quickly, and when he resumed he looked me in the eye again, no trace of a smile on his features. “But my given name is Arthur, and I am the Chief of Pendragon, and so be it you were serious about joining with us, I think we two could become friends. What say you, Clothar the Frank?”
My jaw had fallen open as he began to speak, and I knew I was gaping like a simpleton, but now I dropped to one knee in front of him, meaning to kiss his hand as I would a Bishop’s, but he caught me by the arm and pulled me back to my feet. “No, no, none of that. I have done nothing yet to earn that kind of treatment, and you have newly knocked me on my arse. Folly, then, to follow that by kissing my hand.” He smiled again. “When the time comes to swear loyalty to me, I will let you know. For the time being, if you feel a need to be ceremonious, you can call me Magister, as the others do. Now, what about those spears you have? Will you show me how and why they are different from ours?”
Before I could respond, I had to breathe deeply and calm my racing, exultant heart. I could hear a blackbird piping somewhere among the woods to my right and another, equally melodious and exultant, singing its heart out behind us, and hearing them both united in a paean of triumphant, all-consuming beauty, I felt all at once that anything would be possible in this new land to which I had brought my friends with the thought of serving this impressive man. And when I felt able to speak again without quavering, I nodded my head, partly in acknowledgment, partly in respectful awe.
“Aye, Magister,” I said, addressing my King thus for the very first time, “I will.”
AUTHOR’S NOTE
The thesis
In approaching this story, I was forced to come to terms with a few historical realities that bore heavily upon my vision of how the legend of King Arthur came into existence. In my mind, the entire story revolves around the Arthur/Guinivere /Lancelot triangle, and everything that occurs in the legendary tale is attributable to the humanity—and the human weaknesses—of the King himself, the dysfunctional nature of his marriage to Guinivere, and their joint attraction to the brilliant foreign warrior known as Lancelot.
But here’s the rub: Lancelot of the Lake, Lancelot du lac, is a French name, and Lancelot himself, the legend tells us, was a French knight who crossed the sea to England expressly to serve as a Knight of the Round Table at King Arthur’s Court. Well, even making allowances for legendary exaggeration, that simply could not have happened in the middle of the fifth century, because in those days England was still called Britannia and what we call France today was still Roman Gaul.
It would not be until at least a century later, when the Anglo-Saxon invasions of Britain finally came to an end with the tribes called the Angles emerging as the dominant force, that the country would begin to become known as the land of the Angles—Angle land, and eventually, England.
By the same token, Roman Gaul would not become known as France until much later, when the invading Franks finally established their dominance over their arch rivals, the Burgundians. Over time, the Frankish territories became the land of the Franks—France—while the Burgundians remained in their own territories of Burgundy.
Reputedly wonderful horsemen, the Franks are the people generally credited with bringing the stirrupped saddle to western Europe, and from the time of their first appearance in the Roman Empire, along the Rhine River in the third century, they had a reputation for being blunt-spoken and utterly tactless, probably because their original tongue contained few of the subtleties of Latin or Greek. Be that as it may, we still use the term “speaking frankly” to denote directness and an unwillingness to mince one’s words. There were two main tribal branches of Franks: the Salian Franks, who lived in what is now northern France, Belgium, and the Netherlands, and the Ripuarians, who lived in the southwest of France and in what is now Switzerland.
Clothar is my interpretation of Lancelot. Academic opinion indicates that the name Lancelot probably developed from the Latin word lancearius, a Roman military denomination that was probably similar to the European lancer regiments of the nineteenth century. In Clothar, I have posited a Frankish horse-warrior who comes to Britain, befriends the High King, Arthur, and earns himself an undying reputation as an archetypal hero, the character who will be called Lancelot centuries later by French storytellers who have heard of his fame and his exploits, but have lost awareness of his real name.