Ides of the May (Children of the May 2 - updates weekly)

Chapter Twenty-Seven: The Siege of Tintagel

So it was that four of us led horses onto a broad pebbly bay, which Palomina said was forty miles south and east of Tintagel. My mare was a lotless friendly than Tommy, who, as far as I knew was still at the fishing village in the far north of Caledonia, but she was quicker. Almost before we were mounted, the Saracen boatmen had returned to the ship, and Palomina raised anchor and cut away from the headland. I felt the old jaggedness of Britain as clearly as the pebbles under my boots, and the heavy presence of Merlin, some way to the north. He wasn’t in Cornwall, and I was very glad of that; the wizard was surely too far away to sense my little magic through the distortion of his own immense power.

‘Elia, Drift,’ said Melwas before we mounted. ‘If there is any fighting leave it to Mordred and me. If the situation is dangerous, race back to our rendezvous with whatever intelligence we have gathered.’

‘I can fight,’ said Elia, patting the quiver of arrows strung across her shoulder.

‘Aye, mate,’ said Mordred, ‘but it’s more important that the fleet and army knows what they’re facing. And what their plans are, if you can hear them.’

Elia sighed. ‘If you insist.’

The land we rode through was strangely familiar to me, though I had never been there before. The coast was lovely, full of long bays punctuated by craggy fishing villages built alongside crenellated bays. The landscape was rocky, with long stretches of moor. We took our lunch in the shade of an apple orchard by a broken old homestead, and as we ate I realised how it was I knew the place. I wandered towards the ruins of the house, and when I had confirmed my fears approached the cliffs beyond. The broken house had been Alisander’s family homestead, before his mother fled to the arms of Sir Guy de Grance. I crossed myself as I stood on the edge of the cliff from which the Sessite raider Hermann had thrown Sir Bodwyn, Alisander’s father.

They led the horses over to me. Mordred looked questioningly, noticing how I had reacted to the place.

‘W-W-W-W-We’re about a half d-day’s r-ride from T-T-T-T-Tintagel,’ I told them. ‘There’s a r-r-r-road n-north, b-b-b-b-but I s-s-s-s-suggest we go into the h-h-hills. I know the w-way.’

‘Eh?’ said Elia. ‘You’re not from round here, are you?’

‘Drift’s right,’ said Mordred, before I had to explain myself. ‘I’ve never been to this part of Cornwall, but I’ve seen Tintagel. It’s on the other coast, surrounded by hills that will provide cover for us, assuming Arthur isn’t using them as his vantage point.’

We rode on in silence for almost the rest of the day. I spent the afternoon fretting over whether or not I should confront Mordred over the prophecy of three deaths, sympathise with him over the murder of his birth mother, or otherwise broach the subject of his parentage, but I felt very uncomfortable about it. I ended up riding in front of the others, and several miles before we reached Tintagel I spotted a thin sliver of magic in the sky. It looked like a kite-string without akite, looping purposefully from the place where we heading towards the distant presence of Merlin in the north.

‘What is it?’ said Mordred, who had been riding by my side without me noticing.

‘A s-s-s-spell. It r-r-reminds m-me of Martha – it h-h-h-h-has the quality of her m-magic, I think, though I-I-I-I-I can’t be absolutely sure. It’s l-l-l-like a tether, t-t-t-t-tying something to another m-magician. It c-c-c-could be a fragment of M-M-M-Merlin, like Accolon.’

He nodded. ‘learn what you can, mate. If it comes to a fight, you’re the only magician we have now.’

I nodded solemnly. His calmness disturbed me. He’d had the days of the sea-journey to come to terms with what Neave had told him, but the settled way he was carrying the burden did not seem natural to me.