Bewildered, disorientated and frightened now for his life, he found the highest place he could on the sandbank. He felt a strange calm over him, a detachment from himself. He wondered if this was the beginning of dying. When he cried out it was only to hear the sound of his own voice to be sure he was still alive; but once he’d begun he did not stop. He shouted, he screamed until his head ached with it, until his throat was raw. His words were at once muffled and lost. There was no hope. He sank to his knees in the sand and gave up. The sea would take him, drown him and grind his bones to sand.
A bell sounded from far out across the water, a ship’s bell. Whilst the boy was still doubting his own hearing, it ran out again. Muted in the fog, there was no resonance to it, but it was real. He was not imagining it. The boy was on his feet and running across the sand calling out. ‘Over here! Over here! Help! Help me!’ He stopped to listen for the reply. There was none, only the bell ringing from somewhere out at sea, distant, faint, but definitely there. He splashed out through the shallows and was soon waist-high in the sea. He stopped now only to listen for the bell, to fix his bearings, to reassure himself each time that it was no illusion. The bell was closer now, sharper. He was out of the sea and running on stones, his feet slipping, sliding. More than once he stumbled to his knees, but always the bell called him to his feet and gave him new hope, new strength. It was beckoning now, helping him, guiding him – he was sure of it. ‘Where are you?’ he cried. ‘Where are you?’ The bell answered him again and he staggered on towards it. When he found himself wading out into the sea again, he did not stop. He had no choice, he had to follow the bell. When the water came up over his chin and he could walk no more, he began to swim, pausing every few strokes to listen for the bell, but each time he stopped the bell seemed further from him. He was being swept away. He kicked hard against the current, fighting it; but he knew he was fighting a losing battle. He cried for help, and the salt water came into his mouth and choked him. His strength was fast ebbing from him. The cold of the sea gripped his legs and cramped them. His arms could no longer keep him up. He cried out one last time and the sea covered him. His last living thoughts were of his mother. She was clutching his wet rucksack, hugging it and crying, the rucksack he must have left behind on Great Ganilly. At least she would know he had got that far. Seaweed tugged at his arms and held him down. He hoped there was a heaven.
Heaven was warm and the boy was glad of it. He shivered out the last of the cold and looked about him. He was lying in a vast bed and covered with skins. The fur tickled his ear. A great roaring fire burnt beside him and a man in a long grey cloak was poking at it with a stick, sending showers of sparks up the chimney. The boy had often tried to picture heaven when he was alive. This was not at all how he had thought of it. He was in what appeared to be a huge hall, lit all around with flaming torches; and in the middle of the hall was the biggest table the boy had ever seen, round, entirely round, with maybe a hundred chairs set about it. At one end of the hall was a staircase hewn out of the rock, winding its way upwards into smoky darkness. The boy coughed.
‘So,’ said the man, straightening up and turning towards him. ‘So you are awake at last.’
The boy found his voice. ‘Are you God?’ he asked.
The man put his head back and laughed. His hair and beard were white and long, but the face and eyes were those of a man still young – too young to be God, the boy thought, even as he asked it.
‘No,’ said the man, and he sat down on the bed beside him. ‘I am not God. My name is Arthur Pendragon. I live here, if you can call it living.’ He leant forward and whispered. ‘Year in, year out, they keep me shut up down here in this cave. Even a hibernating bear comes out after the winter, doesn’t he? Be patient, they say. Be patient and your time will come.’
‘They?’
‘There are six of them, six ladies. They brought me here. Only when the fog is down and I cannot be seen, only then will they let me out. I am supposed to rest, but for some years now I have not been able to sleep as I should. I have had dreams and my dreams tell me my time is coming, that I will soon be needed again. I wait only for a messenger.’ He spoke now in greater earnest. ‘You are not the one? You are not the messenger? You were not sent, were you?’
The boy shrank back in fear.
‘No, of course not. You couldn’t be. You didn’t ring the bell, did you? When he comes, he will ring the bell, they have told me so.’ The man smiled with his eyes, and the boy knew he had nothing to fear. More than that, he realized suddenly that he might still be in the land of the living. But he needed to be quite sure.
‘I’m not dead then?’ he ventured.
‘Not you, nor I,’ said Arthur Pendragon. ‘But you nearly were.’ A carpet by the fire stirred and became a dog, a deerhound. The dog yawned, stretched and came padding over to the bed.
‘Meet Bercelet,’ said Arthur Pendragon, and he scratched the dog’s head. ‘My only companion in my long confinement. The ladies who brought me here don’t talk much. They’re good enough to me. I want for nothing, but it’s like living with shadows. Still, now we’ve got you, for a while at least. It was Bercelet who heard you first, you know. Like me, he longs for the fog, so we can escape for just a few hours from this tomb of a place. Nothing he likes better than a good run. They heard you too, my six ladies. “Do nothing,” they said, “or you will betray yourself.” “Do nothing,” I said, “and I will indeed betray myself, and that I will never do, never again.” So I rang the bell, but you did not come. I rang it and rang it, and still you never came. Then I heard you calling again, and you were closer this time. So I went looking for you. I found you just in time, I think.’
‘You pulled me out?’
Arthur Pendragon nodded and smiled. ‘They are not at all pleased with me, my ladies, my keepers. But you are here now and there is nothing they can do about it. And at least I have someone to talk to, someone from the real world. I talk to Bercelet, of course, and to myself – oh, I talk a lot to myself. Do you know what I do? I tell myself all the old stories again and again, so that I won’t forget them. Stories, like people, die once they are forgotten. If they die, then I die with them. I want people to know how it was, how it really was. I don’t want us to be forgotten.’
The boy sat up suddenly. He looked at his watch. The face was misted over. He listened to it, but it had stopped. ‘How long have I been here?’
‘You slept half a day and a whole night.’
‘But I must get back,’ said the boy. ‘They’ll think I’m dead.’
‘No, they won’t,’ he said. ‘We’ll get you back home soon enough, once your clothes are dry. The ladies wanted to send you back straight away, all cold and wet; but I wouldn’t have it. “We’ll send him back warm and dry,” I told them. And so I will, I promise you; and this king does not break his promises, not any more.’
‘A king? You are a king?’
‘I told you. I am Arthur Pendragon, High King of Britain, hibernating these past centuries here in Lyonesse.’
The boy had to smile a little despite himself. The old man nodded knowingly, and went on. ‘You don’t believe me,