No Such Place - Part 3
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That a significant portion of this chapter was written with The Hazards of Love stuck in my head probably says something about the content. In fact, there should probably be a WARNING: this chapter conceived under copious influence of The Decemberists.
Title: No Such Place - Part 3
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Characters: England, Roma Antiqua, Germania, Wales, SCOTLAND!, Mother Gaul, France; King Arthur and associated personages.
Words: 7200 in this part.
Rating: R. A solid, hard, don’t take your children to see it in the theater R.
Timeline: the 5th and 6th centuries A.D.
Summary: Not the King Arthur story you think it is. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.
Back to Part 2
Sometime around 500 A.D….
They share a horse, because there are none small enough for Albion. It’s not as if he’s not ridden before, he has, and horses that were far too large, but Cornwall is three days’ ride at least from the ring of stone and three days alone on the wrong horse will hurt. There’s something that hurts just as much about making it four days slower going and riding in front of Wart, but the horse doesn’t complain, and neither does Albion. And Wart-of course Wart doesn’t.
Albion envies him. Albion envies him so much; of all the growing and grown humans he’s known he’s never really wanted what another one has, except the fact of being tall and strong. And Wart is those now, tall and strong and maybe not quite smart but he knows enough to be what he is, at least, and maybe that’s what Albion envies, that he can’t be himself yet, not without growing. Or at least that if this is who Albion is, he can’t be happy with it like Wart.
It’s been two days from the camp already, since the internment of Emrys’ bones. Albion can already feel the people stirring, getting word on the wind of Wythr as their king. When the rise and fall of the horse’s hooves and the steady scenery of trees lull him enough he can hear his people whispering of how soundly the Saxons were beaten at Badon Hill, wherever they think Badon Hill is. Already the tales are spreading, and already the Saxons are stirring in their bivouacs in the east, preparing for more-
“I’m going to take her to a gallop, all right, Britannia? There’s a farm ahead, I want to get there while I can still see where I’m going.”
“-fine,” Albion says, startled, tired, dizzy. “That’s fine.”
Wart slips an arm around him and holds him close, then tightens his heels on the horse to spur it on. Albion would let himself drift, but he can’t, not far.
-
Tintagel is built into the cliffside, with a road of rocks and lichen to protect it from the land and a falcon’s-dive at least to the sea. The castle itself is even a ways from the town and the clement plains it ostensibly protects. No wonder King Gorlois spends more time at Dimilioc than here-or, Albion reminds himself, no wonder he spent.
Wart stalls when he gets his first sight of the castle, a black tower against the clear night sky. He pulls up on the reins of their horse, turning sideways as it braces its hooves on the damp stone ground. “Even if you hadn’t told me so, I’d have guessed there were secrets here,” he tells Albion, quietly, his chin nudging atop Albion’s head as he speaks. “I half-expect to find more of your friends in that castle than people like me.”
“Are you expecting, asking, or hoping it?” Albion cranes up-it’s hard to see Wart’s face when they’re sharing the horse, and in this stately dark.
“…Expecting,” Wart says after considering it a while. “It’s probably dangerous to ask.”
Albion smiles a little, and closes his eyes. “Ride on, then.”
It is slow work over the stones, and the horse totters more than once; he must be tired too, Albion thinks, it’s been four days’ ride from the ring of stone, or at least Albion’s slept thrice for it, and Wart beside him. By the time they reach the castle gate, the moon has switched positions in the sky, behind them now instead of the castle, behaving all too much like a sun.
The porter asks their names and business; Wart answers, in kind, and they are dismounted, the horse taken to be stabled. In the front hall, all naked stone but for the rushes on the floor, they are greeted by a-a man not much older than Wart (and Albion hurts to think it, he remembers otherwise), with a clean-shaven face and very pale hair.
“You are?”
“Arth, son of Wythr Bendragon. My father is now King in Cymry and Britannia.”
The man deadpans, “Long life to the king.” Albion and Wart respond the same, Wart with a bit more enthusiasm. Only then does the man seem to notice Albion, and he kneels down to look Albion in the eye and smile sweetly. “And you, young lord? Who do you serve?”
“I served his brother Emrys,” Albion answers.
The man laughs. “Or did he serve you?” It’s rather hard to tell if the man knows what Albion is, or is just playing along, so Albion says nothing when the man gets back to his feet. “Margh, son of Gorlois. I greet you on my father’s behalf. He’s left me here to mind my sister and her children.”
“We’ve come to see the place, not the king,” Albion says.
“That’s for the best,” Margh laughs, eyeing Wart. “When I’m here, you’re welcome.”
Albion tries to get Margh to acknowledge him again, standing on his toes. “That’s why we’re here now.”
But all he gets from Margh is the sort of look he used to get from Eire, the one that says all he is a chatty little dear, now won’t you be quiet. Margh turns to Wart again and asks, “So, what about our Tintagel have you come to see?”
A faerie pokes its head out from behind a near corner, the glow from its wings filling the gaps in the stone. It laughs, high and bitter-Wart looks to the sound and light, startled, but turns back to Margh with a grimace. “I-I think everything.”
That gets another laugh from Margh, and a rather horsey laugh at that, very like his name. “You’ll see it better by the light of day,” he says. “Where have you come from?”
Albion answers “Solsbury” at the same time Wart says “Badbury”. They look at each other, and laugh as well, before Wart goes on, “The battle was won on two fronts.”
“Won? Against the Saxons?” Margh nods approvingly. “Well, that’s very like Wythr. I’ll send my sister for some wine, and you can tell me all about it!” But then he looks to Albion-Albion thinks, crankily, at last- and says, “But you should be getting to bed, little one.”
“I can stay up-”
“Whether you can or not, you oughtn’t, not with talk of war. You’ve ridden hard, come now, doesn’t a proper bed sound nice?”
That faerie in the corner is saying much the same thing, and yes, it does sound nice to Albion, but he’s forgetting something and he knows it. “But-”
“Britannia, it’s all right,” Wart says, not kneeling but still lowering himself. “Go to sleep. I’m tired myself, it won’t be long, and I’ll be there when you wake up.”
“But Wart, I-”
Wart scoops him up into his arms and puts a hand in his hair. “I’ll even put you to bed,” he says, and nods at Margh when Margh starts to lead them into the castle proper. The faerie from before stays where it is, and Albion glares at it over Wart’s shoulder. It sputters angrily at him and bares its teeth-
-but Albion’s nearly asleep by then. Nearly, he decides. But not. Not yet.
Gorlois used to be sane. Albion knew him well enough, and he liked to be in Cornwall, which sometimes feels closer to the sea than the white cliffs at the Channel. Gorlois was kind about that, and knew his Nation the way most kings know their Nation, and the rooms his young wife gave to Albion at all the castles in Cornwall had just the right view, into the sun and, at Tintagel at least, down the rock-face to the sea. Even when the king was not in the same keep, Albion was welcome.
He is there again-where he was when last he saw Gorlois’ wife. She and her daughters are here, at Tintagel, and Gorlois at Dimilioc, warring with the brigands. But Igerna is unconcerned, and knows her husband will prevail, and even insists that he will return to her that night, “So I won’t be afraid, and neither should you, little Nation.”
The girls coddle him, which he finds rather tiresome, but he’s grateful all the same. They have pale hands with rough fingertips from scraping at thread and it’s calming, the way the chatter of the fae is calming. The girls even laugh like the pixies do, more at than with him as they tickle him to keep him awake; Morgana is a wicked little thing, and Anna-Morgause just as bad but prettier about it, and plump little Elaine is big enough to keep Albion down. But they are three to his one and their mother finds it charming, and Albion’s endured worse for a room in a castle on a stormy night.
A thunderclap startles him, and Elaine hugs him close, as if he’s warmer than the blankets they’re all nestled in by the fire. “But Mama, he’s smaller than I! How can he be a Nation?”
“The pixies are small too, but you know not to belittle them, don’t you?” That would be Morgana, who is happily putting little plaits in Albion’s hair. Every time she starts a new one Albion screws up his face a little more. “He’s going to get bigger someday, isn’t he?”
Anna-Morgause only smiles, trying to braid the braids even thicker, pouting when her efforts are frustrated by how short Albion’s hair is in comparison to her own.
“Isn’t he, mama?” Morgana asks again.
“Of course he is,” Igerna says, “all little boys do.”
“But he’s not a little boy! He’s a Nation!”
“And wouldn’t it be boring, to be only one thing?” Igerna slides closer on the rug, and takes Albion under the chin. “You can tell them so.”
“I’m going to be the biggest Empire in the world,” he says. He thinks it must look rather silly, with three little human girls giving him plaits and comfits.
It just makes them giggle and snuggle him more, and try to see how many of those little braids they can fit in his hair. “And what kind of Empire will you be?” Morgana asks him.
“A big one.”
“But there’s more to it than that,” Igerna says, in a leading way, more like Rome than Mother. “Why do you want to be so big?”
The easy part of the answer comes out first. “So my brothers will stop telling me I’m small.”
The girls squeal and giggle again, and Morgana asks, “Our brother is little. Your brothers are big?”
“What’s it to you?”
She wriggles her nose at him like an angry badger and pulls his hair. And then her sisters join in on it.
Albion’s never dreamt of being asleep, and he’s certainly never dreamt of being sent to bed. But Igerna is very firm about that, and tells him that he should not fight with girls even if they start it, and has him tucked in under the window facing the sea and the storm.
He’s never dreamt of dreaming either. But how else could he know of what happened to Igerna that night?
The mattress dips beneath him, enough to roll him onto his front. Albion’s eyes start open, and his mouth too, it’s this room, it’s that night-
“Sorry,” Wart says, almost fully stretched out beside him. His teeth flash sheepishly in the dark. It’s not raining. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s all right,” Albion whispers. “Is it morning?”
“Not yet-well, not sunrise, anyway. But I didn’t want to stay. I promised you I’d be there when you woke up, right?” He pulls the blankets on, slides a bit closer to Albion, like he’s small again. “So I couldn’t stay with her.”
“Oh,” Albion says, and thinks, and closes his eyes again. He lifts his head off the pillow and rests it on Wart’s shoulder instead. He smells like-well, salt and sweat, like he’s tried to be clean, and it makes Albion feel warmer than any blanket ever could.
When he curls closer, Wart laughs, and tightens his arm as well. “You were cold?”
Albion tries to speak, but can’t even hear it. He’ll tell Wart again later.
-
At breakfast, there are four little boys warring over bread; little human boys, all smaller than Albion, and all of them with hair the colour of dried blood. The tallest and the second-tallest are squabbling and scuffling, the middle-one is watching the display with interest, and so the littlest (who can’t be more than three years old) is the one to see Albion and point. He has rather pretty hands. It stops the others from fighting, at least.
“…Hallo,” Albion says.
“Halò,” a few of the boys say, and Albion thinks, oh. Oh no, there are four of them and they’re Caledonii’s and-
“Is there any left?” he tries instead, because as long as they don’t think he is what he is it should be all right.
A mug falls off the table, and the boys fighting over the loaf look at it, and then each other, and then the one on top, the smaller and skinnier of the two, rips it out of his brother’s hand and offers it forward. “You mean this?”
“Agravain, that’s mine! I’m the biggest!”
“He’s bigger,” the one with the bread-Agravain, Albion supposes-tells his older brother. “So he gets to decide whose it is. You said so.” He scurries over to Albion and shoves the loaf-well, the three quarters of it that are left-into Albion’s hands, as if it’s ridden with maggots. And then he hides behind Albion and bites his thumb at his brother.
Albion looks at the bread, and then at the boys in turn. They’re all looking to him; the oldest rather sourly as he gets up from the table, the third expectantly, and the youngest just small and confused. Albion even looks over his shoulder to try and see Agravain, but it’s hard to tell whether he’s watching Albion or his brother, and so Albion just ends up looking at the bread again.
Well, he is hungry.
He takes it to the table, which the biggest boy has gotten off of now, and sits at it, putting the bread down. There’s no knife, but Albion has his dagger, which is clean enough for bread, at least he supposes, and he takes it out to hem the bread into four pieces, and then breaks the largest one in two.
He looks at the biggest boy, catches his black eyes, and says, “I cut it, so you pick first.”
The biggest boy nods-wisely, or almost-and wipes his nose and leans his chin onto the table to scrutinize the slices. He keeps looking at Albion like this is a trick-and, well, it is a trick, because they’re Caledonii’s and he’s scared, but more scared of letting the boys know that. But eventually the biggest boy takes one of the sections of bread and waves his brother over. “Does that mean the next-biggest goes next?”
It’s not supposed to sound like a threat, is it? “Yes,” Albion says. “I’ll go last.”
Nodding, he takes a bite of the bread and chews on it. “I’m Gawain.” The next few words are a bit garbled, but he swallows the bread and repeats them. “These’re my brothers, Agravain, Gaheris, and the wee one’s Gareth.” He indicates them in height order as they fetch bits of bread for themselves and the littlest. “Our father’s the King of Orkney!” he adds with obvious pride, crumbs on his lips as he grins.
Albion gulps and tries not to let it show. If they’re here, is the king here? Is Caledonii himself here? And he can’t betray his name, he wont’, but they’re going to wonder what he means by Britannia and he knows it. But there’s nothing else to say, and he won’t lie, so he tells them, “I’m Britannia.”
His portion of bread is still on the table while the others are chewing. Gawain laughs. “You’re a girl?”
“You’re an ugly girl,” Gaheris adds.
“I’m not a girl,” Albion says, “but Britannia’s what I’m called.”
“It’s a stupid name for a boy.” Gawain’s finished his bread by now, enough to ask Albion, “who’s your father?”
That’s an even worse question than are you a girl when he doesn’t want to say what he is. “I don’t have one.”
“You don’t, or you never had?”
“I never had. Like Jesus.”
“Who’s Jesus?”
Oh, right, Albion remembers, wincing, Caledonii. “A god some of the Romans have. I thought you’d know him. His mother was a virgin, and he grew up and was put on a cross and died, but came back after.”
“-so he’s a wight and a bastard,” Agravain says, looking rather confused but somewhat more intrigued than his brothers. “There are gods like that?”
“There are in Rome,” Albion says, glad the conversations’ not about him anymore. He quickly nabs the last bit of bread before he has to say anything else. The redheaded boys crowd around him, so he sits at the bench, but then they keep crowding. It makes it difficult to eat.
“I thought Rome didn’t have any gods,” says Gawain. “That’s what Pa tells us.”
“No, Rome had a lot of gods, Rome just didn’t like them very much.” Albion chews thoughtfully. It’s strange to know more than other boys-well, not strange to know it, but strange to share it. He remembers that Wart used to be as small as Gawain and tries not to think about it. “Or faeries. They had no faeries in Rome.”
Gaheris gasps, and Agravain and Gawain’s eyes go wide. (Little Gareth is just chewing contentedly on his bread and not really listening.) “They don’t have any faeries?” Gaheris’ eyebrows knot in like a little red bird, and Albion tries not to laugh. “No wonder Pa hates them!”
“He hates the Saxons worse,” Agravain says. “Is that why we’re at war with them?”
Albion tries not to sigh, because if he sighs they’ll ask why, and he doesn’t want to say he’s relieved that at least they have a common enemy. “The Saxons kill faeries,” Albion explains. “They killed my friend Grigory and all the faeries hate the Saxons too.”
“You have friends who are faeries?” more than one of them asks, at the same time, and pretty soon what’s left of Albion’s bread lays forgotten on the table as he tells them all about his friends, and some of them that are at this very board and in this very castle. The boys can see them when they try to look-or at least Gawain can, it’s hard to tell with the others, but they go along with almost everything their older brother says, so it’s all right for now. And Albion tells them about other faeries too, about the ones that live on the white cliffs and the ones that walk at night in the Roman cities making mischief and the ones that people think are crows and ravens in the forest because they don’t want to hear the real sounds and about how at this castle, at Tintagel, they leave out bowls of milk on the hillside so that the faeries don’t have to come indoors-
“Mother does that too!” Agravain says. “So that must be true.”
“Is your mother from here, then?”
“Mm-hm!” Agravain says, nodding enthusiastically. “She was the daughter of a king here. The prettiest daughter of a king in the world. That’s why father married her and not someone from north of the wall like everyone wanted him to. He had to go all the way around the world to find the prettiest girl and make her his queen.”
The stones tell Albion which sister it was.
He reaches for more bread, and picks at it. Agravain tells the story: “Mother is sad that none of us have her looks. She has pretty black hair and black eyes and shines all the time. She’s not all white like uncle Margh. And she was too pretty to leave south of the wall, Pa says. When we get big, we’re all going to find brides just like Mother.”
“Are you, now,” she says from the doorway.
The bread crumbles in Albion’s lap. Agravain scrambles over the table to wrap his arms around his mother, and the other boys follow suit, even little Gareth toddling after. Albion turns around on the bench and regards her.
Anna-Morgause ruffles her sons’ hair, and then smiles at Albion. “You didn’t grow after all.”
Albion pouts at her, even if she is as pretty as they say. “I didn’t grow yet.”
Gawain’s the one to ask, “You know Britannia, Mother?”
“But of course,” she says, “I knew him when I was a little girl. He’d stay at this very castle and play with me and my sisters.” Her smile sparkles like polished armour. “He looked so darling with plaits in his hair.”
“And I won’t like it any more now that you’re grown up,” Albion returns, “so don’t try.”
“But it’s nice when Mother plaits our hair,” Gaheris mutters, and Anna-Morgause runs her fingers through it to oblige him.
“I didn’t like it much,” Albion says, “I’m sorry.” He folds his hands behind his back and gives her a little bow. “Your brother mentioned that one of his sisters was here last night. I should have asked after you.”
She waves her hand before settling it back atop Gaheris’ head. “It’s all well and good. I’m here because my husband is battling the same Saxons as you. Arth told us everything last night.”
Albion shivers. He oughtn’t, it’s no colder.
“Boys,” she says, nudging them forward, “make a courtesy to your mother’s Nation, the way you did to your Nation-Britannia’s elder brother.”
And all Albion can think as they bow, with distance across the stone floor and in their black eyes, was that they could have been his friends if they never knew.
“Brother! Brother I know you’re here, come out, come out now, come out now or I’ll call you what you are-”
The stones say it for him, “Stuff it, runt, or don’t you know there’s a war on?”
“It’s my war, of course I know it’s on!” Albion stomps on the stone and hopes Caledonii can feel it in the worst parts. “I just want you to stay out of it.”
“What’s that? Right, the war that you’re losing.” Gravel rustles in the corners; he must be laughing. “Or the one that Cymry’s winning. Hard to tell the difference.”
“He’s not winning it, I am!” There, there’s the voice; Albion should stomp on it too.
“Ha, you think Wythr’s your king just because he doesn’t want you to be Saxony’s whore? Good to know. I’ll tell Orkney. He can be your king too.”
“You wouldn’t dare-”
“Face it, runt. You’re gonna be bottoming out for another Nation just like you did for Rome. Hope your skinny arse can take it for another five hundred years-”
There. There, there’s the gravel, and Albion jumps up and down on it as hard as he can, over and over, “Stop it, stop it, stop it-”
-and then screams when the stone rips right through the sole of his sandal and into his foot, and he hopes it’s not much like a girl’s scream but at this point he can’t even tell.
-
Once Albion’s foot is bandaged, Wart carries him pig-a-back around the keep, and Albion tells him where everything is. It does make him feel better, but not nearly enough, so he’s probably not trying hard enough at it.
Of course, the rooms they’re in now don’t help matters. “This is where I used to play with the ladies of the house. The last time I came here, Margh was a babe in arms, and he’s the only of Gorlois’ sons to survive past then, so his sisters played with me.” Wart laughs; Albion frowns. “Anyway, this is where. I liked the windows.”
“Three daughters, yes?”
“Yes.”
Wart gives a queer sort of laugh, and hefts Albion a little higher up on his back. “C’mon. There’s more to see, isn’t there?”
“More bedrooms that way,” Albion points, “There’s a tapestry in one that I like. It has unicorns. Free ones.”
“Onward, then,” Wart says, altogether too cheerful. Too cheerful; Albion tries to make himself heavier, thinking his legs into stone. (It’s not hard, his foot certainly hurts enough, not to mention his pride.) “…Britannia?”
He snuffles his head into the crook of Wart’s shoulder and hides his face. Wart still has all of that clean smell from last night, even as deep as his hair, and it’s much nicer than thinking about those brutes. It’s much nicer than thinking at all.
“You never did say what I have to believe by coming here,” Wart says, patting Albion’s calf and probably smiling, but Albion won’t look.
“I thought Margh told you already.”
“We didn’t have as much time as he thought,” Wart admits. “I was pretty tired too. Once I’d eaten and drank I’d rather have slept than tell them the story, and Margh understood. We can give him the tale tonight, right? The both of us.”
Albion smiles a bit; that does sound nice. “I don’t like you being bigger than me.”
“I know,” Wart sighs. “I don’t think either of us can help it, though.”
That just makes Albion hold him tighter.
Wart keeps carrying him even though Albion’s not giving him directions anymore; Albion can feel Wart’s head swivel as he looks at the walls. “Which of these rooms has the-oh, I know where we are! When I got lost last night, this was where I wound up.”
“You got lost?”
“On my way back from Anna-Morgause’s rooms. That pixie from last night led me back to you. Oh-is this the tapestry you meant?”
-oh no, no, no, “No-”
“Are you sure-I mean, it has unicorns, and-”
“Wart, she’s your sister!”
Wart doesn’t shudder as much as freeze, and Albion can feel every muscle stop. The arms and back supporting him still and dry like clay, his grip tightens and chokes, everything but his voice and even that falls heavy on the air. “You’re-”
“Don’t-don’t say I’m fibbing, Wart, you promised to believe me-you promised, and I-”
There’s a bedroom near, and Wart rushes them both into it-the room with the unicorns, and the fae in the corner, and everyone’s laughing at Albion for being young and tired and hateful and confused, everyone but Wart. Wart sets him down on the bed and sinks to a kneel like he’s apt to be ill, his head to the mattress and his hair hiding everything. His voice is muffled on the straw. “I have to believe you.”
Albion holds him and strokes his hair and beard, and says only one thing. “Your father had her mother.” If Wart opens his eyes, the stones and the fae will tell him the rest. They’d been there too.
And now there are pixies mocking it all in the corner, laughing and rubbing themselves together so that their wings give off cruel sparks that sizzle with the spit from their mouths. They whirl on the air and ram each other into the stone walls, their eyes rolling back in their heads. The bar of the tapestry beats in time with their kisses.
It is hard to tell if they are coupling or merely making a pantomime of it, but the effect is the same. Wart cringes against the bed, and Albion covers Wart’s ears as if that could protect him. It can’t; soon enough, these walls aren’t the only ones battered in Tintagel, and a rattling goes up through the stone of the keep. Shrieks and growls, inside and out, then and now-the unicorns in the tapestry bray and mount the maidens sent to catch them-the rushes tangle on the floor-ash spreads on the hearth, and it all takes forms now, outlines and silhouettes and worse.
They want Wart to see. “He can, can’t he?” some say between the bursts of breath they catch. “Let him see! Let him see!”
Wart is brave, Albion thinks, Wart has to be brave to be what he is. Brave, and simple, and hopeful, and eager to please. And he knows what he did, or at least enough of it to need the rest.
Albion slides his palms off Wart’s ears. His nails scrape on the blankets, even this slow. He cups Wart under the chin and tries to lift his face, even if his brow is already wrinkled from the madness overhead.
“Did I betray you?” Wart’s voice is nearly a whimper, and his eyes are closed, knotted shut so that prints show at the corners.
Albion can’t lie, not here, so he says neither yes or no. “Do you love her?”
“I wanted her,” Wart says. The fae regale him with choruses of laughter, cries that they have heard that before, in a voice the same, how fair the daughters of Cornwall, and such cuckolds her kings, cuckolds and their sons- “But I didn’t know-”
“And neither did Igerna,” Albion tells him. “Your father-”
Wart opens his eyes.
Every faerie in the room is King Gorlois.
“Your father stole his visage,” Albion says. Cymry helped him. “Igerna thought he was her husband.” He shudders to go on, and Wart to hear it, but- “Gorlois knew you weren’t his, and killed her for it. I don’t know how she got you to Emrys-the fae might, but-“
“I don’t want to know anymore.” Wart doesn’t sob, not quite, but everything hitches, like the words are tapping the last of a bottle not quite empty. “Nothing. Nothing about my father, or mother, or-or Anna-Morgause, what if I-what if she-”
“She knows.”
“But she didn’t-she was herself, she didn’t do anything, and-”
“She’s married now. She’s married to the king of Orkney. It means-it means my brothers are trying to hurt me and they’re using you, like she is, and they don’t mind hurting you or they don’t care because hurting you hurts me.” Wart hasn’t cried, but Albion can’t help it now, with all the noise and the shaking and the look on Wart’s face, dry cracked and ruined. “They know it now. The Nations know it. They know what you’re going to be and how much I care for you, and they’re trying to stop it.”
Wart breathes, one hard human sound amid all the chaos of the fae, and every straw in the mattress shakes from it. Albion holds his cheeks, feels the words as they form. “Let them try.”
It doesn’t stop Albion crying.
“Let them try,” Wart says again, louder, slower, as if it could drive all else away. He looks Albion in the eyes and the reflections of the fae make them shine with whorls and wetness. “I know you. I love you. I won’t let them. Not the Saxons, not your brothers, not even my father. It’s as-simple, as that.”
It has and hasn’t happened before; the last time Albion cried for him like this, he hid it with kisses. Now, he doesn’t know if he can or should. His hands shake, faltering on Wart’s beard-that tremour passes to the rest of his body, until his teeth chatter and his eyes sear and the cut in his foot swells with fresh blood. Wart hushes him, and straightens out of the kneel to let Albion hold him, take him down to the mattress.
They do kiss, but it is different now, like this, like everything. The way Albion is curled, his knees are to Wart’s chest, as if he could hide himself in Wart’s body like a blackbird in a pie. Wart’s kisses fall on Albion’s cheeks and in his hair, and at the tops of his ears.
“If I have to grow up,” Wart whispers, “let it be for you.”
-
Margh sends them out of Cornwall with a small army. He knows as well, Albion is certain, but no one says a word about it. It’s better for the kerns not to know they’re an apology. The same day, over the cliffs of Tintagel, Albion can see a ship bound for the north, and four red-haired boys scampering on the deck among the sailors.
Albion will be content to never see their mother again.
-
“Who goes there, flying the unicorn?”
“The son of your king,” Wart snaps at them, his rein-arm also around Albion on their horse. The rider nearest him holds the flag: vert, a unicorn argent rampant. “I come with an army from Cornwall and the blessing of this Nation.”
“Bendragon doesn’t have any sons,” the headsman says, grinning wide.
“I forgive you your ignorance,” Albion says, sitting higher in the saddle. (He’s been practicing this. He hopes he sounds bigger.) “My lord is the son of Wythr Bendragon and Cornwall’s Igerna, and his brother Margh will vouch for him, though it be his father’s shame. He sends these men on Wythr’s behalf, and my lord to-” (and this pause is equal parts forgetting the word and not wishing to say it) “-bolster his command.”
The headsman’s grin grows still wider. “Well, then! Between the Orkneys and you pixies, we’ll have ourselves an army!”
Wart asks him, “Is the battle nigh?”
“Nigh enough you’ll get no rest afore it,” the headsman says. “We’re marching on Londinium. Now, up the Roman road with you, make a pace of it and you’ll catch the king by night.”
The unicorn on the standard is resting now, while other men ride. He whispers to Albion of the doings of his fellows, of the fae in the forests and the dragons beneath the fort. The red one is awake now, clawing at the white. He should have strength now, for it, for his Nation is riding him and lending his magic.
Albion asks him, over the drum of the hooves and heaved breaths, “Can they win?”
The unicorn lifts his maw, to ask if Albion could.
“With Wart, I can,” he says. “Anything Wart wants, I’ll do, and Wart wants to win this.”
“Then I will tell the dragon through the bones of my fellow that more Nations than the one to ride him wish him to prevail.”
Albion’s heart skips. “-the bones of your fellow?”
“His wounds have been mended with the magic of our kind,” the unicorn on the standard says. “Our blood now threads his.”
Albion’s hand clamps over his own mouth, to keep from gasping or retching or worse. Cymry-he-he said it wasn’t a horn anymore.
The unicorn asks him if he still wants to win.
He says he will leave it to Wart to decide whose king he is.
They don’t reach Wythr’s band that night, or the next, not even after they send their fastest riders ahead. But the Roman road, the Portway, is untroubled as they charge and march up the stones, and soon, they are privy to why.
Corpses line the paving stones, most of them Saxon; those few who are not are buried under cairns, their ghastly hands left above the earth to point the way for those who follow. The fae perch on their fingers and have at their blood, and Albion’s head aches to hear them rejoicing in their new heroes. They suck the soldiers’ fingers grey and white. The glow of their wings sets the skin translucent, so Albion can see the maggots spawning and coiling around their bones.
Wart can see them too, can’t he? He’s certainly looking. But all it does is make him ride harder, until the corpses are fresher, until the stones are still wet. Wythr is carving them a path, the men say, as if he is hacking down trees instead of men. Albion wonders if he could build a city on their bones, or if the fae are planning to do just that. He doesn’t dare lend that idea voice. He thinks they would like it.
His foot is mostly healed, now, or enough at least that it does not pain him when he changes the linen, nor when Wart changes it for him. When they ride, it still aches, with the rest of his legs, perpetually hanging without stirrup or support. But Wart knows what’s ahead, or thinks he does at least, and when the bodies cease to frame the street and begin to spill into it, unburied and unaccounted for, that only quickens his pace, though the hooves of the horses now contend with bone and flesh atop the stone.
-
And then comes they day they see-and hear-more wounded than dead.
“The city,” coughs the one who falls, woad mixed with blood on his face, clinging to the flank of Wart’s horse, “the city will be ours-”
Albion touches him, and sees the lie.
Wythr makes his camp on the banks of the river, south as it flows west. The horses gorge themselves on water and grass, the men on hope and wine. Half cross it in the night under cover of drift and darkness, and the standard of the dragon is raised on the north bank as well. Londinium’s walls are not nearly as tall as the one that Wythr knows; his archers have fired much farther and higher.
Albion should know, and does.
The brigands swarm up them the first light of dawn, and the Saxons don’t know where to direct their arrows. Once the first wave is up and in, they uncouple the gates, and those who survive set the bridges alight. What had been a ring of stone is now a ring of fire. It’s a brigand’s way, Albion remembers-the land is already theirs, and will welcome them back as long as they expel all else from it. It makes Albion ill to think of, and worse still to see, through the melting eyes of all who burn in the city.
He sees, more than feels, as Wart and his band rush up the road, to the smouldering remains of the bridge. He sees the flag cant and arc, forward, and those who can swim dive in swords and all. The horses spook at the fire-oh god, was that Wythr’s intent?-and Wart claps his hands over the creature’s eyes, Albion knows those arms are around him-
But Saxony is in the city, though it be ablaze.
Albion sees him through Wythr’s eyes now, with sword instead of bow. Rome must have seen the same-Rome must have held his own for even longer. But on the far side of the bridge, on the stone road before the wood has taken light, Saxony is terrible, his hair fanned out behind him as if to illuminate the arc of his sword. It’s larger than Wythr’s-he is larger than Wythr-but Wythr parries that massive blade and cuts back with a cross of his own, rending the tooled leather on Saxony’s chest.
The last human that dared to duel a Nation, in Albion’s memory, was Boadicea. Her bones, too, lay beneath this city.
Wart stares, but cannot catch his father’s eyes before they flash red, then white. The sword of Saxony takes Wythr in the chest-not just in, through it, through muscle and bone and the half of his heart that still beats-and Germania’s brutish strength pins the sword, and Wythr’s body with it, to the cracked and chapped stone of the streets of Londinium.
The flames of the bridge lap up around Germania’s shins. He looks through them, at Wart, and then at Albion. His eyes burn with the same unmitigating intensity. He makes to pry his sword from Wythr’s body, and grits his teeth to try. The sword does not budge; perhaps the flames have swollen the blade in the earth. With a dismissive scoff, Germania wrings his hand out, the heat of the hilt too much even through his glove, and commands, for Albion’s ears alone:
“Die of his wounds.”
-
A day and a night later, the city has cooled, that Wart and the survivors may walk among it. The Saxons have lost this fight-but the Britons have lost their king, brigand though he was, and that is what Rome used to call a Pyrrhic victory.
Albion cannot help but think of Rome, however much he wishes it would stop.
By the time Wart has come upon his father’s body, whole but for the sword protruding from his breast, he is not the only one to gather beside it. There are men from all the armies that had convened on Wythr’s march; men from the deepest reaches of Cymry’s place, and from north beyond the walls. Lot is here, and Albion knows him on sight-he tugs the edge of Wart’s tunic, and when he has Wart’s attention, gives the king of Orkney a sidelong glance so that Wart will know, you cuckolded this man. Wart stiffens, but says nothing, and approaches the throng.
They are, one at a time, trying to wrest the sword from Wythr’s body. They’ve stepped on him to brace for it, and no matter how they defile the corpse, the blade holds fast in the stone. Albion is holding Wart’s hand when it starts to shake with fury; he almost holds Wart back, once he sees it, from lashing out, but Albion’s not strong enough to-
“You blackguards!” Wart wrings himself out of Albion’s grip and charges forward, dispersing the crowd. He shoves the latest contender for the sword off and knocks him down, and of course, they all exclaim, they all protest. “My father lies there!”
“And ever there he’ll lay there if we don’t get that out of him,” at least one man says, or something like it, but Wart’s already gone and wrapped his hands around the hilt.
He stands astride what remains of his father’s body, and looks to Albion. He is crying-they both are, Wart with rage and Albion with hope, but neither with strain. The sword slides out of the earth, as if it had never been jammed in at all. Wythr’s body slips back off it, and the crowd is so silent that the thud of it echoes through all of Londinium.
Wart leans on the sword, as it is rather large for him. He turns to the man he knocked down, and offers him a hand. “Sorry,” he says, “did you want this?”
The man rises, but only to kneel like everyone else, Albion included.
-
.
Citations for Part 3
Ye Old Map.
Tintagel. More here.
Margh of Kernow. I am an opera nerd; yes, his wife will bear a mention in later parts of the story.
His three sisters, their mother, and father.
Lot of Orkney, and a certain relevant son. Did I mention I’m an opera nerd?
And I did say that the sword was going to end up in a stone…
On to Part 4...
.
That a significant portion of this chapter was written with The Hazards of Love stuck in my head probably says something about the content. In fact, there should probably be a WARNING: this chapter conceived under copious influence of The Decemberists.
Title: No Such Place - Part 3
Author: Mithrigil
Fandom: Axis Powers Hetalia
Characters: England, Roma Antiqua, Germania, Wales, SCOTLAND!, Mother Gaul, France; King Arthur and associated personages.
Words: 7200 in this part.
Rating: R. A solid, hard, don’t take your children to see it in the theater R.
Timeline: the 5th and 6th centuries A.D.
Summary: Not the King Arthur story you think it is. Part 1 is here, and part 2 is here.
Back to Part 2
Sometime around 500 A.D….
They share a horse, because there are none small enough for Albion. It’s not as if he’s not ridden before, he has, and horses that were far too large, but Cornwall is three days’ ride at least from the ring of stone and three days alone on the wrong horse will hurt. There’s something that hurts just as much about making it four days slower going and riding in front of Wart, but the horse doesn’t complain, and neither does Albion. And Wart-of course Wart doesn’t.
Albion envies him. Albion envies him so much; of all the growing and grown humans he’s known he’s never really wanted what another one has, except the fact of being tall and strong. And Wart is those now, tall and strong and maybe not quite smart but he knows enough to be what he is, at least, and maybe that’s what Albion envies, that he can’t be himself yet, not without growing. Or at least that if this is who Albion is, he can’t be happy with it like Wart.
It’s been two days from the camp already, since the internment of Emrys’ bones. Albion can already feel the people stirring, getting word on the wind of Wythr as their king. When the rise and fall of the horse’s hooves and the steady scenery of trees lull him enough he can hear his people whispering of how soundly the Saxons were beaten at Badon Hill, wherever they think Badon Hill is. Already the tales are spreading, and already the Saxons are stirring in their bivouacs in the east, preparing for more-
“I’m going to take her to a gallop, all right, Britannia? There’s a farm ahead, I want to get there while I can still see where I’m going.”
“-fine,” Albion says, startled, tired, dizzy. “That’s fine.”
Wart slips an arm around him and holds him close, then tightens his heels on the horse to spur it on. Albion would let himself drift, but he can’t, not far.
-
Tintagel is built into the cliffside, with a road of rocks and lichen to protect it from the land and a falcon’s-dive at least to the sea. The castle itself is even a ways from the town and the clement plains it ostensibly protects. No wonder King Gorlois spends more time at Dimilioc than here-or, Albion reminds himself, no wonder he spent.
Wart stalls when he gets his first sight of the castle, a black tower against the clear night sky. He pulls up on the reins of their horse, turning sideways as it braces its hooves on the damp stone ground. “Even if you hadn’t told me so, I’d have guessed there were secrets here,” he tells Albion, quietly, his chin nudging atop Albion’s head as he speaks. “I half-expect to find more of your friends in that castle than people like me.”
“Are you expecting, asking, or hoping it?” Albion cranes up-it’s hard to see Wart’s face when they’re sharing the horse, and in this stately dark.
“…Expecting,” Wart says after considering it a while. “It’s probably dangerous to ask.”
Albion smiles a little, and closes his eyes. “Ride on, then.”
It is slow work over the stones, and the horse totters more than once; he must be tired too, Albion thinks, it’s been four days’ ride from the ring of stone, or at least Albion’s slept thrice for it, and Wart beside him. By the time they reach the castle gate, the moon has switched positions in the sky, behind them now instead of the castle, behaving all too much like a sun.
The porter asks their names and business; Wart answers, in kind, and they are dismounted, the horse taken to be stabled. In the front hall, all naked stone but for the rushes on the floor, they are greeted by a-a man not much older than Wart (and Albion hurts to think it, he remembers otherwise), with a clean-shaven face and very pale hair.
“You are?”
“Arth, son of Wythr Bendragon. My father is now King in Cymry and Britannia.”
The man deadpans, “Long life to the king.” Albion and Wart respond the same, Wart with a bit more enthusiasm. Only then does the man seem to notice Albion, and he kneels down to look Albion in the eye and smile sweetly. “And you, young lord? Who do you serve?”
“I served his brother Emrys,” Albion answers.
The man laughs. “Or did he serve you?” It’s rather hard to tell if the man knows what Albion is, or is just playing along, so Albion says nothing when the man gets back to his feet. “Margh, son of Gorlois. I greet you on my father’s behalf. He’s left me here to mind my sister and her children.”
“We’ve come to see the place, not the king,” Albion says.
“That’s for the best,” Margh laughs, eyeing Wart. “When I’m here, you’re welcome.”
Albion tries to get Margh to acknowledge him again, standing on his toes. “That’s why we’re here now.”
But all he gets from Margh is the sort of look he used to get from Eire, the one that says all he is a chatty little dear, now won’t you be quiet. Margh turns to Wart again and asks, “So, what about our Tintagel have you come to see?”
A faerie pokes its head out from behind a near corner, the glow from its wings filling the gaps in the stone. It laughs, high and bitter-Wart looks to the sound and light, startled, but turns back to Margh with a grimace. “I-I think everything.”
That gets another laugh from Margh, and a rather horsey laugh at that, very like his name. “You’ll see it better by the light of day,” he says. “Where have you come from?”
Albion answers “Solsbury” at the same time Wart says “Badbury”. They look at each other, and laugh as well, before Wart goes on, “The battle was won on two fronts.”
“Won? Against the Saxons?” Margh nods approvingly. “Well, that’s very like Wythr. I’ll send my sister for some wine, and you can tell me all about it!” But then he looks to Albion-Albion thinks, crankily, at last- and says, “But you should be getting to bed, little one.”
“I can stay up-”
“Whether you can or not, you oughtn’t, not with talk of war. You’ve ridden hard, come now, doesn’t a proper bed sound nice?”
That faerie in the corner is saying much the same thing, and yes, it does sound nice to Albion, but he’s forgetting something and he knows it. “But-”
“Britannia, it’s all right,” Wart says, not kneeling but still lowering himself. “Go to sleep. I’m tired myself, it won’t be long, and I’ll be there when you wake up.”
“But Wart, I-”
Wart scoops him up into his arms and puts a hand in his hair. “I’ll even put you to bed,” he says, and nods at Margh when Margh starts to lead them into the castle proper. The faerie from before stays where it is, and Albion glares at it over Wart’s shoulder. It sputters angrily at him and bares its teeth-
-but Albion’s nearly asleep by then. Nearly, he decides. But not. Not yet.
Gorlois used to be sane. Albion knew him well enough, and he liked to be in Cornwall, which sometimes feels closer to the sea than the white cliffs at the Channel. Gorlois was kind about that, and knew his Nation the way most kings know their Nation, and the rooms his young wife gave to Albion at all the castles in Cornwall had just the right view, into the sun and, at Tintagel at least, down the rock-face to the sea. Even when the king was not in the same keep, Albion was welcome.
He is there again-where he was when last he saw Gorlois’ wife. She and her daughters are here, at Tintagel, and Gorlois at Dimilioc, warring with the brigands. But Igerna is unconcerned, and knows her husband will prevail, and even insists that he will return to her that night, “So I won’t be afraid, and neither should you, little Nation.”
The girls coddle him, which he finds rather tiresome, but he’s grateful all the same. They have pale hands with rough fingertips from scraping at thread and it’s calming, the way the chatter of the fae is calming. The girls even laugh like the pixies do, more at than with him as they tickle him to keep him awake; Morgana is a wicked little thing, and Anna-Morgause just as bad but prettier about it, and plump little Elaine is big enough to keep Albion down. But they are three to his one and their mother finds it charming, and Albion’s endured worse for a room in a castle on a stormy night.
A thunderclap startles him, and Elaine hugs him close, as if he’s warmer than the blankets they’re all nestled in by the fire. “But Mama, he’s smaller than I! How can he be a Nation?”
“The pixies are small too, but you know not to belittle them, don’t you?” That would be Morgana, who is happily putting little plaits in Albion’s hair. Every time she starts a new one Albion screws up his face a little more. “He’s going to get bigger someday, isn’t he?”
Anna-Morgause only smiles, trying to braid the braids even thicker, pouting when her efforts are frustrated by how short Albion’s hair is in comparison to her own.
“Isn’t he, mama?” Morgana asks again.
“Of course he is,” Igerna says, “all little boys do.”
“But he’s not a little boy! He’s a Nation!”
“And wouldn’t it be boring, to be only one thing?” Igerna slides closer on the rug, and takes Albion under the chin. “You can tell them so.”
“I’m going to be the biggest Empire in the world,” he says. He thinks it must look rather silly, with three little human girls giving him plaits and comfits.
It just makes them giggle and snuggle him more, and try to see how many of those little braids they can fit in his hair. “And what kind of Empire will you be?” Morgana asks him.
“A big one.”
“But there’s more to it than that,” Igerna says, in a leading way, more like Rome than Mother. “Why do you want to be so big?”
The easy part of the answer comes out first. “So my brothers will stop telling me I’m small.”
The girls squeal and giggle again, and Morgana asks, “Our brother is little. Your brothers are big?”
“What’s it to you?”
She wriggles her nose at him like an angry badger and pulls his hair. And then her sisters join in on it.
Albion’s never dreamt of being asleep, and he’s certainly never dreamt of being sent to bed. But Igerna is very firm about that, and tells him that he should not fight with girls even if they start it, and has him tucked in under the window facing the sea and the storm.
He’s never dreamt of dreaming either. But how else could he know of what happened to Igerna that night?
The mattress dips beneath him, enough to roll him onto his front. Albion’s eyes start open, and his mouth too, it’s this room, it’s that night-
“Sorry,” Wart says, almost fully stretched out beside him. His teeth flash sheepishly in the dark. It’s not raining. “Didn’t mean to wake you.”
“It’s all right,” Albion whispers. “Is it morning?”
“Not yet-well, not sunrise, anyway. But I didn’t want to stay. I promised you I’d be there when you woke up, right?” He pulls the blankets on, slides a bit closer to Albion, like he’s small again. “So I couldn’t stay with her.”
“Oh,” Albion says, and thinks, and closes his eyes again. He lifts his head off the pillow and rests it on Wart’s shoulder instead. He smells like-well, salt and sweat, like he’s tried to be clean, and it makes Albion feel warmer than any blanket ever could.
When he curls closer, Wart laughs, and tightens his arm as well. “You were cold?”
Albion tries to speak, but can’t even hear it. He’ll tell Wart again later.
-
At breakfast, there are four little boys warring over bread; little human boys, all smaller than Albion, and all of them with hair the colour of dried blood. The tallest and the second-tallest are squabbling and scuffling, the middle-one is watching the display with interest, and so the littlest (who can’t be more than three years old) is the one to see Albion and point. He has rather pretty hands. It stops the others from fighting, at least.
“…Hallo,” Albion says.
“Halò,” a few of the boys say, and Albion thinks, oh. Oh no, there are four of them and they’re Caledonii’s and-
“Is there any left?” he tries instead, because as long as they don’t think he is what he is it should be all right.
A mug falls off the table, and the boys fighting over the loaf look at it, and then each other, and then the one on top, the smaller and skinnier of the two, rips it out of his brother’s hand and offers it forward. “You mean this?”
“Agravain, that’s mine! I’m the biggest!”
“He’s bigger,” the one with the bread-Agravain, Albion supposes-tells his older brother. “So he gets to decide whose it is. You said so.” He scurries over to Albion and shoves the loaf-well, the three quarters of it that are left-into Albion’s hands, as if it’s ridden with maggots. And then he hides behind Albion and bites his thumb at his brother.
Albion looks at the bread, and then at the boys in turn. They’re all looking to him; the oldest rather sourly as he gets up from the table, the third expectantly, and the youngest just small and confused. Albion even looks over his shoulder to try and see Agravain, but it’s hard to tell whether he’s watching Albion or his brother, and so Albion just ends up looking at the bread again.
Well, he is hungry.
He takes it to the table, which the biggest boy has gotten off of now, and sits at it, putting the bread down. There’s no knife, but Albion has his dagger, which is clean enough for bread, at least he supposes, and he takes it out to hem the bread into four pieces, and then breaks the largest one in two.
He looks at the biggest boy, catches his black eyes, and says, “I cut it, so you pick first.”
The biggest boy nods-wisely, or almost-and wipes his nose and leans his chin onto the table to scrutinize the slices. He keeps looking at Albion like this is a trick-and, well, it is a trick, because they’re Caledonii’s and he’s scared, but more scared of letting the boys know that. But eventually the biggest boy takes one of the sections of bread and waves his brother over. “Does that mean the next-biggest goes next?”
It’s not supposed to sound like a threat, is it? “Yes,” Albion says. “I’ll go last.”
Nodding, he takes a bite of the bread and chews on it. “I’m Gawain.” The next few words are a bit garbled, but he swallows the bread and repeats them. “These’re my brothers, Agravain, Gaheris, and the wee one’s Gareth.” He indicates them in height order as they fetch bits of bread for themselves and the littlest. “Our father’s the King of Orkney!” he adds with obvious pride, crumbs on his lips as he grins.
Albion gulps and tries not to let it show. If they’re here, is the king here? Is Caledonii himself here? And he can’t betray his name, he wont’, but they’re going to wonder what he means by Britannia and he knows it. But there’s nothing else to say, and he won’t lie, so he tells them, “I’m Britannia.”
His portion of bread is still on the table while the others are chewing. Gawain laughs. “You’re a girl?”
“You’re an ugly girl,” Gaheris adds.
“I’m not a girl,” Albion says, “but Britannia’s what I’m called.”
“It’s a stupid name for a boy.” Gawain’s finished his bread by now, enough to ask Albion, “who’s your father?”
That’s an even worse question than are you a girl when he doesn’t want to say what he is. “I don’t have one.”
“You don’t, or you never had?”
“I never had. Like Jesus.”
“Who’s Jesus?”
Oh, right, Albion remembers, wincing, Caledonii. “A god some of the Romans have. I thought you’d know him. His mother was a virgin, and he grew up and was put on a cross and died, but came back after.”
“-so he’s a wight and a bastard,” Agravain says, looking rather confused but somewhat more intrigued than his brothers. “There are gods like that?”
“There are in Rome,” Albion says, glad the conversations’ not about him anymore. He quickly nabs the last bit of bread before he has to say anything else. The redheaded boys crowd around him, so he sits at the bench, but then they keep crowding. It makes it difficult to eat.
“I thought Rome didn’t have any gods,” says Gawain. “That’s what Pa tells us.”
“No, Rome had a lot of gods, Rome just didn’t like them very much.” Albion chews thoughtfully. It’s strange to know more than other boys-well, not strange to know it, but strange to share it. He remembers that Wart used to be as small as Gawain and tries not to think about it. “Or faeries. They had no faeries in Rome.”
Gaheris gasps, and Agravain and Gawain’s eyes go wide. (Little Gareth is just chewing contentedly on his bread and not really listening.) “They don’t have any faeries?” Gaheris’ eyebrows knot in like a little red bird, and Albion tries not to laugh. “No wonder Pa hates them!”
“He hates the Saxons worse,” Agravain says. “Is that why we’re at war with them?”
Albion tries not to sigh, because if he sighs they’ll ask why, and he doesn’t want to say he’s relieved that at least they have a common enemy. “The Saxons kill faeries,” Albion explains. “They killed my friend Grigory and all the faeries hate the Saxons too.”
“You have friends who are faeries?” more than one of them asks, at the same time, and pretty soon what’s left of Albion’s bread lays forgotten on the table as he tells them all about his friends, and some of them that are at this very board and in this very castle. The boys can see them when they try to look-or at least Gawain can, it’s hard to tell with the others, but they go along with almost everything their older brother says, so it’s all right for now. And Albion tells them about other faeries too, about the ones that live on the white cliffs and the ones that walk at night in the Roman cities making mischief and the ones that people think are crows and ravens in the forest because they don’t want to hear the real sounds and about how at this castle, at Tintagel, they leave out bowls of milk on the hillside so that the faeries don’t have to come indoors-
“Mother does that too!” Agravain says. “So that must be true.”
“Is your mother from here, then?”
“Mm-hm!” Agravain says, nodding enthusiastically. “She was the daughter of a king here. The prettiest daughter of a king in the world. That’s why father married her and not someone from north of the wall like everyone wanted him to. He had to go all the way around the world to find the prettiest girl and make her his queen.”
The stones tell Albion which sister it was.
He reaches for more bread, and picks at it. Agravain tells the story: “Mother is sad that none of us have her looks. She has pretty black hair and black eyes and shines all the time. She’s not all white like uncle Margh. And she was too pretty to leave south of the wall, Pa says. When we get big, we’re all going to find brides just like Mother.”
“Are you, now,” she says from the doorway.
The bread crumbles in Albion’s lap. Agravain scrambles over the table to wrap his arms around his mother, and the other boys follow suit, even little Gareth toddling after. Albion turns around on the bench and regards her.
Anna-Morgause ruffles her sons’ hair, and then smiles at Albion. “You didn’t grow after all.”
Albion pouts at her, even if she is as pretty as they say. “I didn’t grow yet.”
Gawain’s the one to ask, “You know Britannia, Mother?”
“But of course,” she says, “I knew him when I was a little girl. He’d stay at this very castle and play with me and my sisters.” Her smile sparkles like polished armour. “He looked so darling with plaits in his hair.”
“And I won’t like it any more now that you’re grown up,” Albion returns, “so don’t try.”
“But it’s nice when Mother plaits our hair,” Gaheris mutters, and Anna-Morgause runs her fingers through it to oblige him.
“I didn’t like it much,” Albion says, “I’m sorry.” He folds his hands behind his back and gives her a little bow. “Your brother mentioned that one of his sisters was here last night. I should have asked after you.”
She waves her hand before settling it back atop Gaheris’ head. “It’s all well and good. I’m here because my husband is battling the same Saxons as you. Arth told us everything last night.”
Albion shivers. He oughtn’t, it’s no colder.
“Boys,” she says, nudging them forward, “make a courtesy to your mother’s Nation, the way you did to your Nation-Britannia’s elder brother.”
And all Albion can think as they bow, with distance across the stone floor and in their black eyes, was that they could have been his friends if they never knew.
“Brother! Brother I know you’re here, come out, come out now, come out now or I’ll call you what you are-”
The stones say it for him, “Stuff it, runt, or don’t you know there’s a war on?”
“It’s my war, of course I know it’s on!” Albion stomps on the stone and hopes Caledonii can feel it in the worst parts. “I just want you to stay out of it.”
“What’s that? Right, the war that you’re losing.” Gravel rustles in the corners; he must be laughing. “Or the one that Cymry’s winning. Hard to tell the difference.”
“He’s not winning it, I am!” There, there’s the voice; Albion should stomp on it too.
“Ha, you think Wythr’s your king just because he doesn’t want you to be Saxony’s whore? Good to know. I’ll tell Orkney. He can be your king too.”
“You wouldn’t dare-”
“Face it, runt. You’re gonna be bottoming out for another Nation just like you did for Rome. Hope your skinny arse can take it for another five hundred years-”
There. There, there’s the gravel, and Albion jumps up and down on it as hard as he can, over and over, “Stop it, stop it, stop it-”
-and then screams when the stone rips right through the sole of his sandal and into his foot, and he hopes it’s not much like a girl’s scream but at this point he can’t even tell.
-
Once Albion’s foot is bandaged, Wart carries him pig-a-back around the keep, and Albion tells him where everything is. It does make him feel better, but not nearly enough, so he’s probably not trying hard enough at it.
Of course, the rooms they’re in now don’t help matters. “This is where I used to play with the ladies of the house. The last time I came here, Margh was a babe in arms, and he’s the only of Gorlois’ sons to survive past then, so his sisters played with me.” Wart laughs; Albion frowns. “Anyway, this is where. I liked the windows.”
“Three daughters, yes?”
“Yes.”
Wart gives a queer sort of laugh, and hefts Albion a little higher up on his back. “C’mon. There’s more to see, isn’t there?”
“More bedrooms that way,” Albion points, “There’s a tapestry in one that I like. It has unicorns. Free ones.”
“Onward, then,” Wart says, altogether too cheerful. Too cheerful; Albion tries to make himself heavier, thinking his legs into stone. (It’s not hard, his foot certainly hurts enough, not to mention his pride.) “…Britannia?”
He snuffles his head into the crook of Wart’s shoulder and hides his face. Wart still has all of that clean smell from last night, even as deep as his hair, and it’s much nicer than thinking about those brutes. It’s much nicer than thinking at all.
“You never did say what I have to believe by coming here,” Wart says, patting Albion’s calf and probably smiling, but Albion won’t look.
“I thought Margh told you already.”
“We didn’t have as much time as he thought,” Wart admits. “I was pretty tired too. Once I’d eaten and drank I’d rather have slept than tell them the story, and Margh understood. We can give him the tale tonight, right? The both of us.”
Albion smiles a bit; that does sound nice. “I don’t like you being bigger than me.”
“I know,” Wart sighs. “I don’t think either of us can help it, though.”
That just makes Albion hold him tighter.
Wart keeps carrying him even though Albion’s not giving him directions anymore; Albion can feel Wart’s head swivel as he looks at the walls. “Which of these rooms has the-oh, I know where we are! When I got lost last night, this was where I wound up.”
“You got lost?”
“On my way back from Anna-Morgause’s rooms. That pixie from last night led me back to you. Oh-is this the tapestry you meant?”
-oh no, no, no, “No-”
“Are you sure-I mean, it has unicorns, and-”
“Wart, she’s your sister!”
Wart doesn’t shudder as much as freeze, and Albion can feel every muscle stop. The arms and back supporting him still and dry like clay, his grip tightens and chokes, everything but his voice and even that falls heavy on the air. “You’re-”
“Don’t-don’t say I’m fibbing, Wart, you promised to believe me-you promised, and I-”
There’s a bedroom near, and Wart rushes them both into it-the room with the unicorns, and the fae in the corner, and everyone’s laughing at Albion for being young and tired and hateful and confused, everyone but Wart. Wart sets him down on the bed and sinks to a kneel like he’s apt to be ill, his head to the mattress and his hair hiding everything. His voice is muffled on the straw. “I have to believe you.”
Albion holds him and strokes his hair and beard, and says only one thing. “Your father had her mother.” If Wart opens his eyes, the stones and the fae will tell him the rest. They’d been there too.
And now there are pixies mocking it all in the corner, laughing and rubbing themselves together so that their wings give off cruel sparks that sizzle with the spit from their mouths. They whirl on the air and ram each other into the stone walls, their eyes rolling back in their heads. The bar of the tapestry beats in time with their kisses.
It is hard to tell if they are coupling or merely making a pantomime of it, but the effect is the same. Wart cringes against the bed, and Albion covers Wart’s ears as if that could protect him. It can’t; soon enough, these walls aren’t the only ones battered in Tintagel, and a rattling goes up through the stone of the keep. Shrieks and growls, inside and out, then and now-the unicorns in the tapestry bray and mount the maidens sent to catch them-the rushes tangle on the floor-ash spreads on the hearth, and it all takes forms now, outlines and silhouettes and worse.
They want Wart to see. “He can, can’t he?” some say between the bursts of breath they catch. “Let him see! Let him see!”
Wart is brave, Albion thinks, Wart has to be brave to be what he is. Brave, and simple, and hopeful, and eager to please. And he knows what he did, or at least enough of it to need the rest.
Albion slides his palms off Wart’s ears. His nails scrape on the blankets, even this slow. He cups Wart under the chin and tries to lift his face, even if his brow is already wrinkled from the madness overhead.
“Did I betray you?” Wart’s voice is nearly a whimper, and his eyes are closed, knotted shut so that prints show at the corners.
Albion can’t lie, not here, so he says neither yes or no. “Do you love her?”
“I wanted her,” Wart says. The fae regale him with choruses of laughter, cries that they have heard that before, in a voice the same, how fair the daughters of Cornwall, and such cuckolds her kings, cuckolds and their sons- “But I didn’t know-”
“And neither did Igerna,” Albion tells him. “Your father-”
Wart opens his eyes.
Every faerie in the room is King Gorlois.
“Your father stole his visage,” Albion says. Cymry helped him. “Igerna thought he was her husband.” He shudders to go on, and Wart to hear it, but- “Gorlois knew you weren’t his, and killed her for it. I don’t know how she got you to Emrys-the fae might, but-“
“I don’t want to know anymore.” Wart doesn’t sob, not quite, but everything hitches, like the words are tapping the last of a bottle not quite empty. “Nothing. Nothing about my father, or mother, or-or Anna-Morgause, what if I-what if she-”
“She knows.”
“But she didn’t-she was herself, she didn’t do anything, and-”
“She’s married now. She’s married to the king of Orkney. It means-it means my brothers are trying to hurt me and they’re using you, like she is, and they don’t mind hurting you or they don’t care because hurting you hurts me.” Wart hasn’t cried, but Albion can’t help it now, with all the noise and the shaking and the look on Wart’s face, dry cracked and ruined. “They know it now. The Nations know it. They know what you’re going to be and how much I care for you, and they’re trying to stop it.”
Wart breathes, one hard human sound amid all the chaos of the fae, and every straw in the mattress shakes from it. Albion holds his cheeks, feels the words as they form. “Let them try.”
It doesn’t stop Albion crying.
“Let them try,” Wart says again, louder, slower, as if it could drive all else away. He looks Albion in the eyes and the reflections of the fae make them shine with whorls and wetness. “I know you. I love you. I won’t let them. Not the Saxons, not your brothers, not even my father. It’s as-simple, as that.”
It has and hasn’t happened before; the last time Albion cried for him like this, he hid it with kisses. Now, he doesn’t know if he can or should. His hands shake, faltering on Wart’s beard-that tremour passes to the rest of his body, until his teeth chatter and his eyes sear and the cut in his foot swells with fresh blood. Wart hushes him, and straightens out of the kneel to let Albion hold him, take him down to the mattress.
They do kiss, but it is different now, like this, like everything. The way Albion is curled, his knees are to Wart’s chest, as if he could hide himself in Wart’s body like a blackbird in a pie. Wart’s kisses fall on Albion’s cheeks and in his hair, and at the tops of his ears.
“If I have to grow up,” Wart whispers, “let it be for you.”
-
Margh sends them out of Cornwall with a small army. He knows as well, Albion is certain, but no one says a word about it. It’s better for the kerns not to know they’re an apology. The same day, over the cliffs of Tintagel, Albion can see a ship bound for the north, and four red-haired boys scampering on the deck among the sailors.
Albion will be content to never see their mother again.
-
“Who goes there, flying the unicorn?”
“The son of your king,” Wart snaps at them, his rein-arm also around Albion on their horse. The rider nearest him holds the flag: vert, a unicorn argent rampant. “I come with an army from Cornwall and the blessing of this Nation.”
“Bendragon doesn’t have any sons,” the headsman says, grinning wide.
“I forgive you your ignorance,” Albion says, sitting higher in the saddle. (He’s been practicing this. He hopes he sounds bigger.) “My lord is the son of Wythr Bendragon and Cornwall’s Igerna, and his brother Margh will vouch for him, though it be his father’s shame. He sends these men on Wythr’s behalf, and my lord to-” (and this pause is equal parts forgetting the word and not wishing to say it) “-bolster his command.”
The headsman’s grin grows still wider. “Well, then! Between the Orkneys and you pixies, we’ll have ourselves an army!”
Wart asks him, “Is the battle nigh?”
“Nigh enough you’ll get no rest afore it,” the headsman says. “We’re marching on Londinium. Now, up the Roman road with you, make a pace of it and you’ll catch the king by night.”
The unicorn on the standard is resting now, while other men ride. He whispers to Albion of the doings of his fellows, of the fae in the forests and the dragons beneath the fort. The red one is awake now, clawing at the white. He should have strength now, for it, for his Nation is riding him and lending his magic.
Albion asks him, over the drum of the hooves and heaved breaths, “Can they win?”
The unicorn lifts his maw, to ask if Albion could.
“With Wart, I can,” he says. “Anything Wart wants, I’ll do, and Wart wants to win this.”
“Then I will tell the dragon through the bones of my fellow that more Nations than the one to ride him wish him to prevail.”
Albion’s heart skips. “-the bones of your fellow?”
“His wounds have been mended with the magic of our kind,” the unicorn on the standard says. “Our blood now threads his.”
Albion’s hand clamps over his own mouth, to keep from gasping or retching or worse. Cymry-he-he said it wasn’t a horn anymore.
The unicorn asks him if he still wants to win.
He says he will leave it to Wart to decide whose king he is.
They don’t reach Wythr’s band that night, or the next, not even after they send their fastest riders ahead. But the Roman road, the Portway, is untroubled as they charge and march up the stones, and soon, they are privy to why.
Corpses line the paving stones, most of them Saxon; those few who are not are buried under cairns, their ghastly hands left above the earth to point the way for those who follow. The fae perch on their fingers and have at their blood, and Albion’s head aches to hear them rejoicing in their new heroes. They suck the soldiers’ fingers grey and white. The glow of their wings sets the skin translucent, so Albion can see the maggots spawning and coiling around their bones.
Wart can see them too, can’t he? He’s certainly looking. But all it does is make him ride harder, until the corpses are fresher, until the stones are still wet. Wythr is carving them a path, the men say, as if he is hacking down trees instead of men. Albion wonders if he could build a city on their bones, or if the fae are planning to do just that. He doesn’t dare lend that idea voice. He thinks they would like it.
His foot is mostly healed, now, or enough at least that it does not pain him when he changes the linen, nor when Wart changes it for him. When they ride, it still aches, with the rest of his legs, perpetually hanging without stirrup or support. But Wart knows what’s ahead, or thinks he does at least, and when the bodies cease to frame the street and begin to spill into it, unburied and unaccounted for, that only quickens his pace, though the hooves of the horses now contend with bone and flesh atop the stone.
-
And then comes they day they see-and hear-more wounded than dead.
“The city,” coughs the one who falls, woad mixed with blood on his face, clinging to the flank of Wart’s horse, “the city will be ours-”
Albion touches him, and sees the lie.
Wythr makes his camp on the banks of the river, south as it flows west. The horses gorge themselves on water and grass, the men on hope and wine. Half cross it in the night under cover of drift and darkness, and the standard of the dragon is raised on the north bank as well. Londinium’s walls are not nearly as tall as the one that Wythr knows; his archers have fired much farther and higher.
Albion should know, and does.
The brigands swarm up them the first light of dawn, and the Saxons don’t know where to direct their arrows. Once the first wave is up and in, they uncouple the gates, and those who survive set the bridges alight. What had been a ring of stone is now a ring of fire. It’s a brigand’s way, Albion remembers-the land is already theirs, and will welcome them back as long as they expel all else from it. It makes Albion ill to think of, and worse still to see, through the melting eyes of all who burn in the city.
He sees, more than feels, as Wart and his band rush up the road, to the smouldering remains of the bridge. He sees the flag cant and arc, forward, and those who can swim dive in swords and all. The horses spook at the fire-oh god, was that Wythr’s intent?-and Wart claps his hands over the creature’s eyes, Albion knows those arms are around him-
But Saxony is in the city, though it be ablaze.
Albion sees him through Wythr’s eyes now, with sword instead of bow. Rome must have seen the same-Rome must have held his own for even longer. But on the far side of the bridge, on the stone road before the wood has taken light, Saxony is terrible, his hair fanned out behind him as if to illuminate the arc of his sword. It’s larger than Wythr’s-he is larger than Wythr-but Wythr parries that massive blade and cuts back with a cross of his own, rending the tooled leather on Saxony’s chest.
The last human that dared to duel a Nation, in Albion’s memory, was Boadicea. Her bones, too, lay beneath this city.
Wart stares, but cannot catch his father’s eyes before they flash red, then white. The sword of Saxony takes Wythr in the chest-not just in, through it, through muscle and bone and the half of his heart that still beats-and Germania’s brutish strength pins the sword, and Wythr’s body with it, to the cracked and chapped stone of the streets of Londinium.
The flames of the bridge lap up around Germania’s shins. He looks through them, at Wart, and then at Albion. His eyes burn with the same unmitigating intensity. He makes to pry his sword from Wythr’s body, and grits his teeth to try. The sword does not budge; perhaps the flames have swollen the blade in the earth. With a dismissive scoff, Germania wrings his hand out, the heat of the hilt too much even through his glove, and commands, for Albion’s ears alone:
“Die of his wounds.”
-
A day and a night later, the city has cooled, that Wart and the survivors may walk among it. The Saxons have lost this fight-but the Britons have lost their king, brigand though he was, and that is what Rome used to call a Pyrrhic victory.
Albion cannot help but think of Rome, however much he wishes it would stop.
By the time Wart has come upon his father’s body, whole but for the sword protruding from his breast, he is not the only one to gather beside it. There are men from all the armies that had convened on Wythr’s march; men from the deepest reaches of Cymry’s place, and from north beyond the walls. Lot is here, and Albion knows him on sight-he tugs the edge of Wart’s tunic, and when he has Wart’s attention, gives the king of Orkney a sidelong glance so that Wart will know, you cuckolded this man. Wart stiffens, but says nothing, and approaches the throng.
They are, one at a time, trying to wrest the sword from Wythr’s body. They’ve stepped on him to brace for it, and no matter how they defile the corpse, the blade holds fast in the stone. Albion is holding Wart’s hand when it starts to shake with fury; he almost holds Wart back, once he sees it, from lashing out, but Albion’s not strong enough to-
“You blackguards!” Wart wrings himself out of Albion’s grip and charges forward, dispersing the crowd. He shoves the latest contender for the sword off and knocks him down, and of course, they all exclaim, they all protest. “My father lies there!”
“And ever there he’ll lay there if we don’t get that out of him,” at least one man says, or something like it, but Wart’s already gone and wrapped his hands around the hilt.
He stands astride what remains of his father’s body, and looks to Albion. He is crying-they both are, Wart with rage and Albion with hope, but neither with strain. The sword slides out of the earth, as if it had never been jammed in at all. Wythr’s body slips back off it, and the crowd is so silent that the thud of it echoes through all of Londinium.
Wart leans on the sword, as it is rather large for him. He turns to the man he knocked down, and offers him a hand. “Sorry,” he says, “did you want this?”
The man rises, but only to kneel like everyone else, Albion included.
-
.
Citations for Part 3
Ye Old Map.
Tintagel. More here.
Margh of Kernow. I am an opera nerd; yes, his wife will bear a mention in later parts of the story.
His three sisters, their mother, and father.
Lot of Orkney, and a certain relevant son. Did I mention I’m an opera nerd?
And I did say that the sword was going to end up in a stone…
On to Part 4...
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