Page 56 of The Quest for Excalibur
I peered at the mess of tangled lily stalks beneath the water, and my heart did a leap of fear. Suppose we were wrong and this sword wasn’t for him? Suppose Nimuë had lured Arthur here to drown him, bidden by her evil mother? Did I trust those lilies not to ensnare him if the magic of this place rejected his quest?
“Of course.” He pulled his undershirt off. “It’s not deep water. It’ll be lying in the mud at the bottom.” He grinned, as though excited by the challenge. “If we’re right, fate will guide my hands.”
I glanced at Con, who’d sat down again. Blank-faced, he watched Arthur pull his boots off. How could this be safe? My fear that it might be some trick that Con was part of surfaced again.
Arthur was pulling off his braccae now. I put a restraining hand on his arm. “Be careful. Morgana might have had a hand in this.”
He shook his head, naked now, clothes in a heap on the thwart of the rocking boat. I’d quite forgotten to be afraid of it doing that. “Not her. This is the sword of Macsen Wledig, and now it’s going to be my sword. You watch.”
He planted a hard kiss on my lips and slid over the side of the boat into the water. “Whoa. Bloody chilly.” He laughed up at me, more an excited boy than a man of five and thirty. Then, before I could think of a reason to stop him, he took a deep breath, upended and dived beneath the lily pads, feet kicking out.
He was gone. The ripples from where he’d dived dispersed. The lily pads floated back to cover the space where he’d vanished. Silence descended. As if he’d never been here.
I stared at Con, and he stared back. All sorts of things flashed through my head. Might he be in Morgana’s pay? Like Hafren. Was he party to a deception, a pawn in the hands of the powerful? Had fate made a pawn of me too? My brain churned so much I couldn’t decide.
Under the willows, the shadows seemed to shift as though someone standing there had moved, and another shiver ran through me. Was this magic, or something else? Ghosts? The hairs along my skin prickled upright.
Time ticked by far too slowly. The hot sun on the back of my neck burned into my skin, the dark water shimmered, and insects whined as they skimmed the surface. My hands resting on the boat’s edge drummed an anxious tattoo.
Where was Arthur? Too long had passed. This wasn’t right. For how long could he hold his breath? A sudden vision of him trapped, entangled in the lilies’ grasping stalks with Morgana laughing in triumph, came to me, and I made to stand up, with no idea what I’d do.
The boat rocked, and Con shot out a hand to push me down.
Right beside the boat, the surface of the water broke and the lilies parted. Arthur’s head appeared, mouth gasping for breath, hair slick to his face. He seized the side of the boat with one hand and hung on for a moment, gulping air.
I heaved a deep breath myself, realizing with a start that I’d been holding it, and reached out to cover his hand with mine. How cold it was.
For a moment he raised his eyes to meet mine, triumph blazing in them. Then he spat water from his mouth, and raised his other hand out of the water. In it he held a long, soggy shape, wrapped in wet cloth. Unmistakably a sword.
“Oh my God, you found it,” I gasped, leaning toward him, hands outstretched.
He shoved the wrapped sword into my arms, then heaved himself in over the stern, flopping onto the boards, water running everywhere. The boat rocked wildly again, but I didn’t care. He hadn’t drowned.
Con sat holding the pole and watching, the light of triumph burning in his brown eyes as well, as though he’d just witnessed something he’d never thought to see. Perhaps he’d thought his old granny had spun him a tale, or that even if it were true, it would never happen during his custodianship of the secret.
Without bothering to get dressed, Arthur sat up and wiped his wet hair out of his eyes, then took his hard-won prize. Layers of some kind of oiled cloth had made a fat sausage of the sword, bound with many ties, but the shape was clear. Grabbing his knife from his discarded swordbelt, Arthur slid it into the layers of ancient cloth, slicing through them. They fell away.
Pulling the last layers from off the sword, he laid it, long and deadly and perfect, across his bare thighs. The oiled cloth had preserved its integrity and no hint of rust or any other kind of degredation marred its beauty. Perhaps something more had helped to keep it pristine in its watery grave for over a century, waiting for the right man to give it rebirth. Who knew?
No ordinary warrior’s blade this, but a weapon fit for an emperor. The glimmering damascene blade caught every beam of sunlight and shone as though a star had fallen to earth. Was the ornate pommel made of real gold? The cross-guard, wider than normal, boasted an intricate patterning to the tips, and the grip was of worked red leather, ridged to give a firmer hold, and with no sign of damage after its long submersion.
“I never dared t’think it might be real,” Con whispered, mesmerized. “That it’d happen while I were keeper.”
Arthur set his hand on the grip, lifted elated eyes to mine, and raised the sword. Across the patterning on the blade, that rippled like watered silk, the light shifted and danced.
Mesmerized as much as Con, I couldn’t take my eyes off it.
Lifting it above his head, Arthur pointed the tip toward the wide blue sky. “Excalibur is mine.”
Over on the bank behind him I caught a movement. Were those two figures watching us again? Or had I just imagined it? No. Nothing there. Or whatever it was had gone, perhaps satisfied that we had the sword at last.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
No haste attacheditself to our return. Joining me in an awed silence, Arthur pulled his clothes on again, unable to tear his eyes away from the sword where it lay on the thwarts of the boat, as Con poled us back to firm ground.
Our guide nosed the boat into the reeds again, until it bumped against dry land, then he ran lightly along its length and leapt ashore with the mooring rope. A hefty tug brought us close enough that I didn’t have to get my feet wet when I stepped ashore.
With the little boat well-hidden in the reeds, we walked back across the island in silence, Con following. Arthur held the sword reverently in both hands, unable to wipe the look of satisfaction from his face.
