X marks the spot. X is a kiss. X as in Ex.
She peered out of the window. The Land Rover was still there, but she couldn’t see Doug. Had he gone shopping? Gone for a walk? His coat hung over the back of a chair — he obviously meant to come back.
She knew what she had to do, though she hated it. Now you know who I really am, she told him silently. I won’t inflict any more on you.
She gathered up the papers in the guidebook and stuffed them into her backpack, fumbling in her haste. She didn’t want him to come back and find her there. She knew he’d insist on coming with her. You’ll be safer this way, she promised him. It was the last, only good thing she could do.
She took the bag of food and hoped he didn’t mind. She left twenty euros on the table so he wouldn’t go hungry, together with a quick note scribbled on a piece of graph paper. There was no time to say everything she felt — so much gratitude, so much guilt. She simply wrote:
I’m sorry for everything.
She drove away and didn’t look back.
L
The bow is rough and gnarled: not horn or yew, like the Normans use, but unstripped dwarf-elm. That won’t stop it from killing me. Welsh archers can hit a bat’s eye in the dark.
I drop my spear and raise my hands in surrender. It’s a wise move. More men melt out of the forest. In their green-brown smocks and muddy faces, they look like trees come alive. They bind my hands and lead me away.
We march through the night. Whatever dangers lurk by the roads, these men don’t fear them. To be a prisoner is to be trapped in a long, lightless tunnel. I stare at my feet, never looking more than a yard in front of me. I don’t think about the King, or about Malegant — I don’t care. Instead I think about Jocelin. I remember the weight of the spear in my hand and the tremor of the point as it hung over his face. I remember the flash of mercy. I wonder why I did it. The rope chafes my wrists and I ask God, ‘Is this how You repay me?’
At dawn we reach a city on a river surrounded by woods and meadows. Sea-going ships unload on wooden piers, while a lofty stone tower overlooks stout walls. But if you look closer, the picture changes. The town is like an old fur coat patched with homespun cloth. Holes in the masonry have been filled with mortared rubble, or merely barricaded with palings, while the handsome red roofs sprout straw where the tiles have fallen through. At its centre stands an enormous roundhouse, like a pavilion: stone walls topped with a cone of thatch. The stones look ancient; the thatch is still yellow.
‘Whose castle is this?’
My captors ignore me. Dredging words from the depths of memory, I repeat it in Welsh. They look surprised.
‘Morgan ap Owain, King of Morgannwg.’
They lock me in a wattle enclosure that smells of pigs and leave me to rot. An icy wind blows rain through the woven branches, though I still haven’t dried out from my plunge in the river. I curl myself in a ball and fall asleep.
Hours later — I don’t know how many — the guards return. They tie my arms behind my back and slide a rod through my elbows, then drag me like a plough along the street to the roundhouse I saw earlier. Huddled in front of the gate a wretched group of prisoners waits in the rain. I don’t recognise them without their armour, until I see Hugh.
‘Are these your friends?’ one of the guards asks. I nod; he whips the rod out from my arms and pushes me in with the other prisoners. I almost sprawl headlong into the mud, but Hugh catches me.
‘They captured me just after I crossed the river.’
‘Us too. We found the ford Malegant used. Two minutes later, we were surrounded.’
‘What are they going to do to us?’
‘Give us an audience with the King of Morgannwg.’
He says the name with scorn. I know from my childhood that the Kingdom of Morgannwg hasn’t existed for fifty years. When the Normans conquered Wales they abolished it along with all the other old kingdoms. I assume that now, in the anarchy of the civil war, some enterprising local lord or bandit has seized power, resurrecting an obsolete title to buttress his authority.
William’s standing just behind Hugh. ‘Don’t mention the King,’ he hisses to me as I go past.
The guards take us through a double gate into King Morgan’s hall. It’s circular and entirely open, except for a central pole supporting the roof. A round table circles the edge of the room, with knights and barons seated at it like judges in a court.
The hall is filled with kings — rather, the same king again and again, woven into the cycle of tapestries around the room. A young king, a gold circlet on his head, receiving prophecies from a white-bearded old man. The same king, crowned and older, killing a swarthy giant; defeating a Roman emperor; locked in a great battle; finally, laid in a boat tended to by women in white. And, at the head of the table opposite the door, seated in majesty on a throne carved with dragons and lions.
The King moves. I blink. The smoky hall’s deceived me: the last hanging isn’t a tapestry, but cloth-of-gold, hung in the space where the eighth tapestry should be. The King sitting in front of it is entirely reaclass="underline" a flesh-and-blood man about my age, with a neatly trimmed beard and a gold crown on his head that looks very much like the one in the tapestries.
I don’t know how he claimed his title, but I have to admit he looks more the part than King Stephen did. He lounges back in his chair and studies the prisoners. William has slipped back into the middle of the group, keeping his face down to avoid being recognised. Hugh stands at the front and meets the King’s gaze.
‘Who are you?’
‘Knights from England. An enemy stole something from us. We followed him here to get it back.’
The King presses his fingertips together. ‘You should have appealed to me for help. What was it he stole?’
Hugh stays silent. That doesn’t impress the King.
‘If the king of England wants to invade my kingdom, I’ll give him a fight. I’ll push him all the way back to the sea, reclaim all of Britain as it was in Arthur’s time.’
He’s exaggerating. It’s a fine castle, but Stephen’s army could reduce it in a week. If Stephen hasn’t crushed this pretender already, it’s only because he’s had more urgent concerns. But Morgan’s men love it. They’re on their feet, shouting and clapping. Some of them pelt us with scraps from their plates. I duck a crust of bread and listen to what they’re saying. One name, chanted over and again.
Arthur. Arthur. Arthur.
At last I understand the tapestries, the crown and the throne. Morgan’s an opportunist, a usurper papering over his theft with a grandiose title that’s fallen out of use. But the title he’s claiming is more ancient and profound than the dilapidated kingdom of Morgannwg.
Morgan raises his hand and the hall goes quiet. Hugh’s about to say something, but before he can speak I step forward, feeling for where the different torches overlap to make the brightest place. It’s a trick I learned as a troubadour — no one listens to a man in shadow.
‘I can tell you a tale.’
The King’s gaze switches on to me. ‘Iwant answers. The truth. I have the best minstrels and harpers in Wales to tell me stories.’
‘Not like mine. I have the greatest story that was ever told in a royal court.’
Another troubador’s conceit. No one pays to hear about the moderately interesting.
‘My story is the story of Perceval the Welshman. A story no one has ever heard before. A story of secrets.’
Our eyes meet; he’s intrigued. He nods.