Sword of the Rightful King by Jane Yolen
Table of Contents
Title Page
Table of Contents
Copyright
A King’s Test
Dedication
Epigraph
QUEEN’S ANGER/MAGE’S DREAM
Summons
Bloodlines
Queen’s Entrance
Travel from Orkney
Message Delivered
Castle Mage
Dream
May Queen
Talking to Trees
MAGE’S DREAM/KING’S HOPE
Under the Oaks
Visitor to Cadbury
Fledgling
Dungeon
Hard Work
KING’S HOPE/PRINCE’S DANGER
Riding South
Hard Hands
Brothers
Prince’s Choler
Off on the Hunt
Aftermath
The Price of Honor
PRINCE’S DANGER/KING’S HAND
The Marvel
Sword in the Stone
Courtyard
Helping a Mage
Round Table
Doves
Hand to the Sword
KING’S HAND/QUEEN’S MAGIC
May Queens All
At the Gate
Queen/King/Mage
The Great Dinner
Curses
Confessions
Changes
QUEEN’S MAGIC/KING’S SWORD
Reading the Air
Out to the Stone
Trying the Sword
Sword of the Rightful King
Weddings
Epilogue
Chatting with Jane Yolen
The Whole of the Sword Poem
About the Author
Copyright © 2003 by Jane Yolen
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
For information about permission to reproduce selections from this book, write to Permissions, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company, 215 Park Avenue South, New York, New York 10003.
www.hmhbooks.com
First Magic Carpet Books edition 2004
Magic Carpet Books is a trademark of Harcourt, Inc., registered in the United States of America and/or other jurisdictions.
The Library of Congress has cataloged the print edition as follows:
Yolen, Jane.
Sword of the rightful king: a novel of King Arthur/Jane Yolen.
p. cm.
Summary: Merlinnus the magician devises a way for King Arthur to prove himself the rightful king of England—pulling a sword from a stone—but trouble arises when someone else removes the sword first.
1. Arthur, King—Juvenile fiction. [1. Arthur, King—Fiction. 2. Knights and knighthood—Fiction. 3. Middle Ages—Fiction. 4. Great Britain—History—To 1066—Fiction.] I. Title.
PZ7.Y78Sw 2003
[Fic]—dc21 2002152622
ISBN 0-15-202527-8
ISBN 0-15-202533-2 pb
eISBN 978-0-544-27189-0
v1.0613
A King’s Test
Merlinnus led them right up to the stone. On its white marble face was a legend lettered in gold:
WHOSO PULLETH OUTE THIS SWERD OF THIS STONE
IS RIGHTWYS KYNGE BORNE OF
ALL BRYTAYGNE
FOR A LONG TIME none of them spoke. Then Arthur read the thing aloud, his fingers tracing the letters in the stone. When he finished, he looked up. “But I am king of all Britain.”
“Then pull the sword, sire,” said Merlinnus.
Arthur smiled and shrugged. He knew he was a strong man. Except for Lancelot, possibly the strongest man in the kingdom. It was one of the reasons Merlinnus had chosen him to be king. He handed the torch to Gawen, who held on to it with both hands.
Then Arthur put his hand to the hilt of the sword, tightened his fingers around it till his knuckles were white, and pulled.
The sword remained in the stone.
To editor Michael Stearns, who knows how to wait,
and to my husband, David, rightful king of my heart
There was seen in the churchyard, against the high altar, a great stone four square, life unto a marble stone; and in midst thereof was like an anvil of steel afoot on high, and therein stuck a fair sword naked by the point, and letters there were written in gold about the sword that saiden thus:—WHOSO PULLETH OUT THIS SWORD OF THIS STONE AND ANVIL, IS RIGHTWISE KING BORN OF ALL ENGLAND.
—Sir Thomas Malory, Le Morte d’Arthur
I
QUEEN’S ANGER/MAGE’S DREAM
Midnight by the bell. The churchyard was deserted and in darkness. By the front door, which was but a black rectangle in a blacker mass, a large square was marked off on the ground. In the square’s center stood an enormous stone, which—if the moon had been shining—would have reminded any onlooker of a sleeping bear. A dead bear, obviously. For in the bear’s back was thrust a great sword, its haft pointing slantwise toward the night sky.
1
Summons
PRINCE GAWAINE took the stone steps two at a time, trying to guess why his mother, the queen, had sent for him. She only did that when she was angry with him, or wanted something from him, which usually came to the same thing. Either that or she was going to recite his stupid bloodlines again.
“I’ve half a mind,” he said, puffing a bit as the steps were steep and many and he hadn’t climbed them in a while, “half a mind to tell her what I’ve decided.” He stopped on the landing and took a deep breath. “That I don’t want to be king of Orkney. Not now. Not when I turn eighteen. Not ever.”
He smiled faintly, having spoken aloud what he had been thinking secretly for over a year. Though of course he hadn’t said it aloud to his mother, just aloud to the stone walls.
Let Agravaine have the throne, he thought fiercely. Or the twins. He took a deep breath. Or that brat Medraut. He started up the stairs again, still taking them on the double and thinking crankily about his mother and the throne. He knew that even if they were given the throne in his place, none of his brothers would have a chance to rule, anyway. Morgause would keep the power close to her own breast, with her spiderweb intrigues, with her spiteful magicks, with her absolute conviction that he or one of his brothers should not only be king of the Orkneys but High King of all Britain. And she the ruling queen.
A blast of wind through one of the arrow slits scoured his corn-colored hair. It blew sense into him at the same time. He slowed down.
No sense running, he thought. She might think I’m eager to see her.
When he made the last turning, he came face-to-face with her chamber door. No matter how often he came to it, the door was always a surprise, a trick of space and time, another of her plots. Made of a single panel of oak carved into squares, the door looked like a game board and was painted black.
Gawaine smoothed down his grey linen tunic and knocked on the one blank square. The rest of the squares were warded with arcane signs, spells that only she could read. The blank square was well-worn. No one, not any of her servants or his brothers—or even his father, when he was alive—ever dared knock on any other section of the door.
There was no answer.
Grinding his teeth—something he seemed to do only when he was home, in Orkney—Gawaine knocked again.
Still no answer.
“Damn her!” he whispered.
How she loved to play these games. Her servant Hwyll had said, specifically, she wanted to see Gawaine at once. He’d emphasized the two words: at... once.
“A pus pot,” Gawaine said aloud, not knowing if he meant Hwyll, his mother, or the situation he found himself in.
Once again.
He banged on the door with his fist, and cried out, “Mother!” His voice rose to a whine. Hardly fitting, he thought angrily, for a Companion of the High King.
MORGAUSE COULD hear her son’s angry cry as she came down the stairs from the tower, clutching a handful of bitter vetch. She smiled.
It’s good to let him stew, she thought. A stew long boiled makes easier eating.
She never tried to make things simple for her boys. Princes needed to be tested even more than peasants.
And my sons most of all.
Stopping on the stairs, she flung open one of the corbelled windows and glanced out.
The late-spring seas around the Orkneys were troubled. Ninety islands and islets, and all of them buffeted by extraordinary waves. “High wind and waves build character,” she told herself. Her sons were in want of character.
Agravaine she was certain of, though he still needed a bit more tempering. And the twins—they dangled together, like rough-polished gems on a chain. Medraut was so like her, she knew his mind without working at it. But Gawaine...
Gawaine had gotten away from her. It had been three years or more since she’d understood him. It was all she could do to keep control. Of him. Of herself when she was with him. He made her angry when anger did not serve. He made her furious to the point of becoming speechless. Still, she needed him more than he needed her, and so she had to bring him close again. To heel. Like a hound.
Speaking a word of binding, she flung three leaves of the vetch through the window. The wind brought them back to her and she closed her hand around them, stuffing them into her leather pocket. She smiled again, willing herself to calm. Gawaine would be hers as he once was, the adoring and adorable towheaded first child. All of Lot’s sons were susceptible to spells of binding, as had been their father. It was just a matter of patience and time. She had plenty of both.
Continuing down the stairs, she discovered Gawaine red-faced and furious, standing with his back to her door.
“I’m glad to see you, too, dear,” she told him.
2
Bloodlines
GAWAINE couldn’t help himself: He spluttered. All the fine speeches he’d rehearsed slipped away, and his mother just stood there smiling her damnable smile.
“Always on time,” she was saying. “That’s an admirable quality in a young man.” Though she herself used time as a weapon.
“You...” he sputtered, “asked for me.”
She was still giving him that beautiful and seductive smile that drove the men around her mad. Running a ringed finger through her silky black hair, she purred, “I always like to see my boys.”
Ever a dangerous sign, he thought. When she purred, she was satisfied. Or hunting.
“Did you want something, Mother?” There. Better to be plain about it. Not elliptical, not like her.
“Do I always have to want something?” she asked.
But she does, he thought. She always does.
She held out a hand and drew him to her, and he went into her chamber, reluctantly but inexorably, as if bespelled. She went ahead of him and arranged herself, catlike, on a low wooden settle, its hard lines softened by plump feather pillows. Then she patted a place beside her with a nail-bitten hand. It was the only thing human about her, those nails, bitten down to the cuticles.
He remained standing. “Mother.”
She smiled. “Son.”
An uncomfortable silence seemed to stretch like silken spiders thread between them.
At last she spoke. “Do you have to go back to Arthur’s court so soon? There is plenty enough to do here in your own kingdom.”
So that’s it! She would try to keep him here as ruler, though of course he knew which one of them would actually rule.
He shook his head. “I like Arthur’s court, Mother. It’s a place of knightly practices and fine company. Arthur is a prince among men.”
“Put silk on a stick,” she said bitterly, “and it will still look fine.” Her beautiful face was suddenly fierce with anger, her eyes drawn down into slits.
“Mother,” he began, but she cut him off.
“Since you refuse to be king here, under my guidance, I will let you go off south,” she said, standing so that they were eye to eye. “But know this—you did not decide to go to Cadbury at the first. Do you remember complaining? Whining? Being afraid?”
He did, but did not want to acknowledge it.
“You had night sweats.”
Startled, his eyes flew wide open. He wondered how she knew that. He had taken the sheets down to the river himself.
“But you went at last. Because I willed it,” she said. “Because I wanted you to be my eyes and ears in that place.”
“A spy!” Now he was furious and his eyes drew down into the same thin slits as hers so that for the first time he looked like her son. “I am a prince. You cannot expect me to be a spy.”
“Not a spy, no.” Her voice was suddenly smooth, a stone under fast water. She put her hand on his forearm. “Not a spy—not in the court of a man you admire. How could I ask such a thing?”
But she just did, he thought, then wondered, or did I mistake her?
She was smiling at him. “Not a spy,” she repeated, “but still your mothers man. Of course you tell your mother all that happens at court. It is expected. As you have done for these past three years. Did you think I did not listen?”
He had in fact thought just that. She’d never reacted to anything he’d told her by so much as a blink. When he’d reported on the balls, the tourneys, the hours of practice on horse and with sword, the time Arthur had gifted him with a pair of brachet hounds, even the names of the girls he had flirted with and the one he had, briefly, loved—none of that had seemed to interest her. Now, suddenly, he understood why. But even had he known something about Arthur’s policies, about his allegiances and alliances, he would not have repeated what he knew. He was not a spy. Never a spy. He shuddered.
If she noticed his shudder, Morgause did not remark on it. Instead she continued as if she hadn’t guessed how he felt. “I want to know what Arthur says behind closed doors. I want to know which of the Companions regards him with awe, which with a certain cynicism. I want to know the Companion who is most in need of funds, which one drinks too much, and which one forgets himself with the pretty maids. Or...”—she smiled her cat smile—“the pretty boys.”
“Mother, I...” He put up a hand to hold back her words, but it was like trying to stop the onrushing sea.
“You are not to be guiled by Arthur. I sent you there to observe, so that we may be ready when the time comes. Not to play at swords, not to speak love to unworthy maidens. You are there for us, for what we can and will be.”
Her face was now fierce with her desire. It made her ugly. He hardly knew her when she was like this.
“Arthur is nothing but a petty usurper, for all you like his manners,” she whispered harshly. “Some day—and soon—he will be plucked from the throne. That is the day I prepare for. The day I prepare you for.” Her eyes glistened.
“Mother!” His voice cracked as if he were thirteen again.
“And you must beware especially of that jackdaw, that black rag of a man, that Druid priest, that...”
“Merlinnus.” Gawaine put his hand on hers, but she shook him off, as if his hand were a wet, dirty thing. She had never been one for mawkish displays of affection, but she had never before shrugged him off so thoroughly. Not even when he was a muddy boy, in from a ride in the rain. So he smiled at her to hide his hurt. “His name is Merlinnus, Mother, and he is not really so terrible.” He shook his head. “Just terribly old.”
“Old?
Gawaine stifled his sigh. Now she will begin the litany, the bloodlines, he thought. The old story that holds her in such thrall. For a moment he looked away. She is the only one still moved by it. Then, fearing himself a coward, he looked back, steeling himself for the onslaught of her words.
She was not slow in getting to her point. “Together that old man and that petty king...” She spit the last hard word out, spraying spittle. “They have conspired to steal your birthright, Gawaine. My mother married Uther Pendragon for the High King’s throne, so that her children should sit on it after he was gone. Surely she didn’t marry him for love. Uther was a pig, an upstart; he wore drippings in his beard. His clothes smelled of dog. No—worse than dog. He smelled like a rutting wild boar. Did you know he once laid his filthy hands on me? Me! His wife’s daughter, a princess in my own right. I never told you that. But he forced me, a child. Goddess—he was a terrible king and a worse man.”
Her eyes had taken on the mad look Gawaine hated. No good ever came of that look. Whippings were ordered, executions announced, true loves sundered, forced marriages perpetrated—tortures, dismemberments, exile. He held up his hand to stop her, though he knew not even the gods could stem that tide. Did he believe her? He no longer tried, for she always mixed truth and lies into her stories, like honey in poison to sweeten it as it went down.
“My mother had no male children by Uther, so the throne should by marriage right have come to me and thus to you.” She continued as if his weariness were not written upon his face; her hand clutched the bodice of her dress like a claw.