The Sword and the Circle
CONTENTS
Cover
About the Book
Title Page
1 The Coming of Arthur
2 The Sword in the Stone
3 The Sword from the Lake
4 The Round Table
5 The Ship, the Mantle and the Hawthorn Tree
6 Sir Lancelot of the Lake
7 Sir Gawain and the Green Knight
8 Beaumains, the Kitchen Knight
9 Lancelot and Elaine
10 Tristan and Iseult
11 Geraint and Enid
12 Gawain and the Loathely Lady
13 The Coming of Percival
Author’s Note
About the Author
EXTRA EXTRA!
Copyright
ABOUT THE BOOK
Rooted in Celtic folklore, medieval ideals of chivalry, and the last gallant struggles of the British against the Saxon invaders, the legends of King Arthur and his knights have been told in song and story since the Middle Ages.
Rosemary Sutcliff, with her unique feel for Dark Age Britain, conveys all the mystique and mystery of the golden age of Camelot in her entrancing trilogy, retelling with poetry and magic the ancient tales of great deeds.
The Sword and the Circle tells of the birth of Arthur, the gift of Excalibur, the forming of the Round Table and the first noble quests of its knights until the arrival of Percival . . .
1
THE COMING OF ARTHUR
In the dark years after Rome was gone from Britain, Vortigern of the narrow eyes and the thin red beard came down from the mountains of Wales, and by treachery slew Constantine of the old royal house and seized the High Kingship of Britain in his place.
But his blood-smirched kingship was little joy to him, for his realm was beset by the wild hordes of Picts and Scots pouring down from the North, and the Saxons, the Sea Wolves, harrying the eastern and southern shores. And he was not a strong man, as Constantine had been, to hold them back.
At last, not knowing what else to do, he sent for two Saxon warchiefs, Hengest and Horsa, and gave them land and gold to bring over their fighting men and drive back the Picts and the Scots and their own sea-raiding brothers. And that was the worst of all things in the world that he could have done. For Hengest and Horsa saw that the land was rich; and at home in Denmark and Germany there were many younger sons, and not enough land nor rich enough harvests to feed them all; and after that Britain was never free of the Saxon-kind again.
They pushed further and further in from the coasts, sacking the towns and laying waste the country through which they passed, harrying the people as wolves harry the sheep in a famine winter; and many a farmer died on his own threshold and many a priest before his altar, and ever the wind carried the smell of burning where the Saxons went by.
Then, seeing what he had done, Vortigern drew back into the dark fastnesses of Wales and summoned his wise men, his seers and wonder-workers and begged them tell him what he should do.
“Build yourself a mighty tower and lie close in it. There is nothing else left to you,” said the foremost of the seers.
So Vortigern sent out men skilled in such matters to find the best place for building such a stronghold, and when he had listened to their reports, his choice fell upon Eriri, the Place of the Eagles, high in the mountains of Gwynedd. And there he gathered together workmen from the North and the South and the East and the West, and bade them build him a tower stronger than any tower that ever had stood in Britain before then. The men set to work, cutting great blocks of stone from quarries in the hillsides; and the straining teams of men and horses dragged them up to the chosen place. And there, on the cloudy crest of Eriri, they began to set the mighty foundations that should carry such a stronghold as had never been seen in Britain until that time.
But then came a strange thing. Every morning when they went to start work, they found the stones that they had raised and set in place the day before cast down and scattered all abroad. And day by day it was the same, so that the stronghold on the Place of the Eagles never grew beyond its first day’s building.
Then Vortigern sent again for his seers and magicians and demanded to know the cause of the thing, and what they should do about it.
And the seers and magicians looked into the stars by night and the Seeing-Bowl of black oak-water by day, and said, “Lord King, there is need of a sacrifice.”
“Then bring a black goat,” said Vortigern.
“A black goat will not serve.”
“A white stallion, then.”
“Nor a white stallion.”
“A man?”
“Not even a man who is as other men.”
“What, then, in the Devil’s name?” shouted the High King, and flung down the wine-cup that was in his hand, so that the wine spattered like blood into the moorland heather.
And the chief of the wise men looked at the stain of it, and smiled. “Let you seek out a youth who never had a mortal father, and cause him to be slain in the old way, the sacred way, and his blood sprinkled upon the stones, and so you shall have a sure foundation for your stronghold.”
So Vortigern sent out his messengers to seek for such a youth. And after long searching they came to the city of Caermerddyn; and in that city they found a youth whose mother was a princess of Demetia, but whose father no man knew. The princess had long since entered a nunnery, but before that, when she was young, she had been visited, as though in a dream, by one of those who the Christian folk call fallen angels, fair and fiery, and lost between Heaven and Earth. And of his coming to her, she had borne a son and called him Merlin.
All this she told freely to the High King’s messengers when they asked her, thinking no harm. But when they had heard all that she told, they seized the boy Merlin and brought him to Vortigern in the fine timber hall that he had caused to be set up in the safety of the mountains hard by Eriri. And Vortigern sat in his great seat spread with finely dressed wolfskins and cloth of crimson and purple, and pulled at his meagre beard and looked at the boy through the smoke tendrils of the hearth fire. And the boy stood before him, lean and whippy as a hazel wand, with dark hair like the ruffled feathers of a hawk, and stared back at him out of eyes that were yellow as a hawk, also, and demanded, as a man demanding of an equal, to know why he had been brought there.
The High King was not used to being spoken to in that tone, and in his surprise he told Merlin what he asked, instead of merely ordering him to be killed at once.
And the boy listened; and when it was told, he said, “And so my blood is to be shed that your tower may stand. It is a fine story that your magicians have told you, my Lord King, but there is no truth in it.”
“As to that,” said Vortigern, “the matter is easily put to the proof.”
“By scattering my blood upon the stones of your stronghold? Nay now, do you send for your magicians, and bid them stand before me, and easily enough I will prove them liars.”
Vortigern tugged at his beard and his narrow eyes grew narrower yet. But in the end he sent for his wise men, and they came and stood before the boy Merlin.
And Merlin looked them over from one to another, and said, “The Sight and the Power have grown weak in you and your like in the long years since the passing of the true Druid kind. Therefore, because you are darkened to the truth, you have told the King that my blood shed upon these stones shall make his tower stand. But I tell you that it is not the need for my blood that causes his stones to fall, but some strange happening beneath the ground which every night engulfs the work of the day. Let you tell me then in your wisdom, what thing that is!”
The magicians were silent, for their powers had indeed grown dim.
Then Merlin turned from them to Vortigern. “My Lord the High King, let your men dig beneath the foundations until they come to the deep pool that they will find there.”
So the King gave his orders and the men set to work, and in a while they broke in through the roof of a vast cave; and all the floor of the cave was one deep, dark pool, from the depth of which slow bubbles rose to the surface as though some great creature lay asleep and breathing deeply far below.
Then Merlin turned to Vortigern who had come from his hall to look on, and to his magicians behind him, and said, “Tell me, oh workers of wonders and walkers in secret ways, what lies at the bottom of this pool?”
And again they could not answer.
And Merlin said to the King, “My Lord Vortigern, now let you give orders that this pool be drained, for at the bottom of it you shall find two dragons lying asleep.”
And when the pool was drained, there, far down among the rocks, lay the two dragons, sleeping; and one of them was white as frost and the other was red as fire. And the King and all those who stood about the pool were struck with amazement. But the magicians had slipped away.
“By day,” said the boy Merlin, “these creatures sleep as you see them now; but every night they wake and fight together, and their battle lasts until the sunrise gives them sleep again; and their battling shakes the mountain crest, and the earth gapes and closes and the waters of the pool are lashed to tempest; and it is so that the tower that you would build above them does not stand.”
Now the end of the day had come, and the dusk was deepening fast, and even as he spoke the sleeping dragons began to rouse. Fire-red and frost-white coils rippled and stirred and the great heads reared up, and the jaws gaped and began to breathe out thin jets of fire that grew and strengthened to rolling clouds of flame; and with a waking roar that made the very ground thrum beneath the watchers’ feet, the two monsters sprang together.
All night long, by the levin-light of their own breath that filled the great chasm and played like summer lightning upon the whipped-up shallows remaining of the pool, the two fought. And first the white dragon had the advantage and drove the red to the far end of the pool; and then the red dragon rallied and turned the fight again; and the water boiled about their lashing coils, and all the crest of the mountain shuddered with the tumult of their battle. And slowly the red dragon drove the white back until he in his turn was at the end of the pool. And then when it seemed that all was over, the white dragon gathered himself and hurled himself yet once more upon the red . . .
But the first light of day was waking in the sky, and the fire of the dragons sank and their movements grew slower, and little by little the great coils relaxed, and they sank to sleep.
Then Vortigern demanded of the boy Merlin the meaning of what he had seen; and Merlin told him that the red dragon was Britain and the white dragon was the Saxon kind, and that every night they fought out the conflict between the two.
“Then surely the red dragon had the victory,” Vortigern said, “and I and my realm have nothing to fear.”
“But the white dragon was gathering his fighting power again when this new day laid sleep once more upon them both,” said Merlin. And he looked as though into a great distance; but a distance that was within himself. Three strains of power ran deep within Merlin; from his mother who was of the Demetii he had the herb-skills and the ancient half-lost wisdoms of the Old People, the Little Dark People; and from the old Druid, almost the last of his kind, who had taken and reared and trained him after his mother entered her nunnery, he had star-knowledge and the skills of shape-shifting and art-magic; and both these he could use at will. But from his father he had the power to look into the future as other men look into the past; and this came not at his own will but at the will of the power itself, that was like a great wind that snatched him up into some place where past and future were one. So now he began to shake like a young aspen tree in the wind. And he began to prophesy in a high clear voice many things concerning the red dragon and the white.
And when at last the high wind of prophecy forsook him and he ceased to shake, and looked again out of his own golden eyes and spoke again in his own voice, he said, “But all these things will be after your time, my Lord the King.”
And a pang of fear shot through Vortigern, and he said, “Then how can they concern me? Tell me now of my time!”
“Your time?” said Merlin. “Your time is short, and ends in fire at the hands of the sons of the dead High King Constantine, Ambrosius and Utha. They have gathered many fighting men in Less Britain, which some call Brittany, that gave them shelter when you slew their sire; and already their ships are fitted out, already they spread their sails to the wind that shall carry them across the Narrow Seas. They will drive back the Saxon hordes; but you they will burn shut up in your strongest tower, in vengeance for their father’s murder. Then Ambrosius shall be crowned High King; and he shall do great things for this realm of Greater Britain; but he shall die at the Saxons’ hands; and after him Utha shall take the crown; but his days, too, shall be cut short, by poison. Yet after him, to Britain in her need, shall come another, greater than they.”
Then between fear and rage, Vortigern cried out to his guards, “Seize him! Stop his mouth with your swords!”
But the rim of the sun was lifting above the rim of the mountains eastward, and the first rays shone level into the eyes of King and court and guards, making them blink; and when the dazzle cleared from their sight, the dark gape of the dragon-pool had closed over, and only the mountain grasses shivered in the dawn wind where it had been. And of the boy Merlin nothing remained but a kind of shimmer in the air that was gone almost before they saw it; and a voice that lingered after the rest was gone, “There shall come another . . . another . . . greater than they . . .” and was lost in the soughing of the wind through the grasses.