IX The Ballad of Sir Palomides

Dinadan caught up with Palomides in the courtyard, and they rode out of Tintagel together. The Moor seemed preoccupied, so Dinadan respected his mood and did not speak for several miles. At last, the summer sun being about to set, Dinadan asked mildly, "Are we going to stop for the night?"

"If you wish, my friend," Palomides replied.

Dinadan nodded. "I usually do," he said.

They made camp in a wide, treeless meadow. They had traveled together enough that they had a routine and were able to care for their horses and make a light supper without talking, but when they had eaten, Palo-mides leaned back against his saddle and spoke. "Are Sir Tristram and Sir Lamorak truly considered great knights?"

"By some."

"But they are fools and villains."

"Well, yes, if you want to quibble," Dinadan said.

"I thought I knew what a knight was when I came here, but now I do not. I see such different examples before me. Please, my friend, can you tell me what makes a man a knight?"

Dinadan hesitated, remembering with shame how he had been knighted at his father's drunken hands. "I don't think I can," he said at last. He let his breath out slowly. "There was some Greek who said that everything on earth is just a reflection of the perfect, ideal form of that thing. I forget the fellow's name."

"Plato," Palomides said. "I'm surprised that the English have heard of him."

Dinadan grinned. "King Arthur reads a lot, and he mentioned him one time. Anyway, I think about this notion of ideals sometimes. Is there an ideal figure of a knight? The eternal knight that every earthly knight is supposed to reflect?"

"Yes!" Palomides said. "That's just what I want to know."

"I don't think there is," Dinadan said bluntly. "Everyone has a different notion of what a knight is, and so everyone is imitating a different imagined ideal. Tristram and Lamorak think the perfect knight is a great fighter who fetches sticks for his lady love. Others think the true knight's the one who wins the most tournaments, or who wears the dandiest clothes. And heaven only knows what Culloch would think a knight is, if Culloch had a brain to think with."

Palomides frowned. "But if every knight makes up his own idea of what a knight is, how does one judge? How can I know what a great knight is like?"

"You should meet Arthur and Gawain and Bedivere," Dinadan said. "Then you would see what knights should be. So, since we've done spreading cheer at Tin-tagel, shall we go to Camelot?"

The Moor looked at Dinadan for a long, silent minute, his eyes intense in the firelight and shaded with thought. Then Palomides said, "Very well. But not at once. I think, my lord Dinadan, that I should like to see more of Britain—if you would accompany me."

Dinadan was puzzled by, but not averse to, the suggestion. He meant to ride back to the convent and check on Brangienne in a few months, after she'd had some time to settle in, but he had no plans in the meantime. "Ever see Scotland?" he asked.

The two knights rode together for two months, to Scotland and Orkney and then south again. Occasionally they met other knights and often encountered minstrels. It was from the minstrels that Dinadan heard the results of his and Palomides's visit to Tintagel. King Mark, mad with jealous rage, had confined Iseult to the castle, and she was locked in a tower bedroom after dark. All passing knights were turned away at the gates. As for Tristram, it was reported that he was wandering about England, unwashed and unkempt, eating roots and challenging everyone he met to battle. Everyone said he'd been driven mad by love, like someone in a bad story. Dinadan had never believed such tales, but if anyone's mind was weak enough to be overset by such a thing as love, it would be Tristram's.

One crisp fall day, the two knights came upon the sort of mysterious encounter that always seemed to lead to adventure in knightly tales. Topping a hill, they saw a black barge, tied at the edge of a wide river, and beside the barge, an armored knight with a gray beard kneeling before a rough wooden cross.

As the two knights approached, the knight looked up, and his eyes were weary with grief. He did not speak, but he rose to his feet, drew his sword, and laid it on the ground. "At last," the man said. "I am ready."

Dinadan and Palomides glanced at each other. Dinadan shrugged and said, "Ready for what?"

"I will not resist you," the man said. "I have been apart from my brother for too long, and I am ready to rejoin him."

Dinadan scratched his chin and looked again at Palomides. The Moor didn't speak, but only frowned and looked past the man, at the barge. At last, feeling he ought to say something, Dinadan said, "Right, then. Go see your brother. We wouldn't dream of stopping you."

The old man looked at Dinadan, and said in an anguished voice, "Must you sport with me, too? Did your masters Helius and Helake bid you mock me first?"

Dinadan blinked and started to protest, but Palo-mides spoke. "Is that your brother in the boat, my lord?" he asked. Dinadan looked again and realized that the boat was a funeral barge. As a breeze shook the drapes, he glimpsed inside the body of a white-haired man.

"Yes," the old man said. "That is King Hermance. I beg you to delay no more, but do what you were sent to do." With that, the old man bowed his head and bared his neck.

"He expects us to kill him," Palomides said to Dinadan.

"Some people are so demanding," Dinadan replied. "Considering we've only just met, I mean."

The old man looked up, puzzlement in his face. "Do you mean you aren't from Helius and Helake either?"

"No," Dinadan said. "Who are they?"

The man sighed and shook his head sadly. "I must say, it's the outside of enough. I get myself all ready, and then nothing comes of it after all, and I have to start again."

Palomides dismounted. "But forgive me, my lord, why do you wish to die?"

"Oh, it's not that I wish it. It's just that I won't leave my brother again, and so my death is inevitable. Helius and Helake can't leave me alive, or their throne would be unsafe."

Dinadan dismounted beside Palomides. "It sounds like a story. We've nothing very pressing just now. Why don't you tell us what this is about? Who are Helius and Helake?"

The lines on the man's face eased, and he nodded. "My nephews," he said. "Or stepnephews, rather. Twin boys that my brother, the King of Withernsea, took in as his own after their parents were drowned in a flood."

"That was decent of him," Dinadan commented.

"There was no man more kind and good than Hermance," the man said. "It was what made him so fit to be king, and what made me so unfit to take his place. I never had his patience or goodness."

"But why should you have taken his place anyway?" Palomides asked.

"Hermance never had children, you see. And then, when his wife died and he swore that he'd never marry again, it didn't take a wizard to see who was up next. Hermance began to groom me for the throne, and I wanted none of it. I wanted adventure. So I left. That was more than twenty years ago."

"Did you find adventure?" Dinadan asked.

"No," the man said grimly. "Nor does anyone else. Adventure is something that happens to someone else. When it's happening to you, it's only trouble."

"You found something better than adventure," Palomides said gravely. "You found wisdom. Perhaps you would not be such a bad king after all."

The man shook his head briskly, as if driving away a fly, and said, "It hardly mattered, though. Shortly after I left, Hermance took in these two peasant boys, who had been found by a boatman, and raised them up to be his heirs." The man shook his head slowly. "He seems to have made a wretched business of it, too. I can see what happened, of course. Hermance was always quick to sympathize with the unfortunate, and he must have given the orphan boys everyt hing they wanted and more."

Dinadan nodded with understanding. "Probably not the best way to groom wise and generous kings, you mean?"

"They became evil, grasping men, taking what they wanted from the land and the people, abusing every right and privilege they had been given. They became so brazen that word of their deeds spread beyond Withernsea, and I heard of them. I came home. But too late." He looked back over his shoulder at the funeral barge.

"What happened?" Palomides asked.

"I don't know. Perhaps Hermance confronted his adopted sons. Perhaps they were just tired of him. But they killed him and threw the body in the Humber River." He looked up, frowning with pain. "Why the river? Why would they do that?"

"Is this the same river in which their true parents drowned?" Palomides asked.

"Yes," the old man said. "The same river that they should have drowned in themselves!"

"How did King Hermance end up on the boat?" Dinadan asked gently.

"There is a boatman who lives near the castle, a good man. It was he who found Helius and Helake and brought them to my brother. It was also he who, twenty years later, found my brother's body. Then the boatman did a brave thing: he decided the people of Withernsea should know what had happened. He turned his own boat into this sad funeral barge and poled it up river, crying out for all to come and see their murdered king."

"I should like to meet this boatman," Palomides said.

The old man gestured to the rough cross where he knelt. "This is his grave. He got this far up the river before the brothers' soldiers caught up with him. They shot him with arrows and were about to hang him, still alive, when I arrived here. I stopped the hanging, and drove the men away. The good boatman lived long enough to tell me his story. I have stayed here since then, waiting."

Dinadan frowned. "Waiting for what? Oh ... I see. You told the men who were killing the boatman who you were, didn't you?"

The old man nodded. "Yes. I told them to leave in the name of Hermind, Prince of Withernsea—that's my name. It wasn't the smartest thing I could have done, I've realized. That was the day before yesterday. Helius and Helake will be sending someone soon, I should think."

Dinadan and Palomides looked at each other in silence for a moment, then Dinadan sighed. "I suppose I ought to put on my blasted armor. Hope it still fits."

The assassins came later that day, seven mounted knights. Dinadan watched them approach, and though his heart was pounding with nervousness, he spoke casually, "You must have a fierce reputation, Hermind, for the brothers to send such a crowd."

"No," Palomides said. "It is a sign of their fear. Only cowards would send seven against one. Come, friends." He mounted his horse. Dinadan supposed Palomides would consider him a coward, too, if the Moor knew how little he wanted to fight, but he followed Palo-mides's example.

The seven knights rode down the hill to the river, then stopped. One said, "Which of you is Hermind the Usurper?"

Sir Hermind drew his sword. "I am Sir Hermind, brother of the good king Hermance, who lies dead here, murdered by those he loved, but I am no usurper."

"Who are these others?" the knight demanded. His voice cracked slightly.

Palomides answered. "Today, we are all Hermind. To kill him, you must kill us all."

The knight hesitated. "We ... we only intended ... no one said there were three of you!"

Palomides charged, and the other two followed. Dinadan managed to draw his sword without cutting off his horse's ears, and even landed one glancing blow on a knight's hand, making that knight drop his sword and jerk backwards, so sharply that he fell from his horse, but beyond that he contributed little to the ensuing fray. He didn't need to do more, though. Sir Hermind unseated two of the attacking knights, and Palomides appeared to be quite competent to take on the remaining four himself. Dinadan had never seen Palomides fight, but the Moor was a warrior of great skill. In no time at all, only one of the original seven was still mounted and that was only because he was galloping away with all the speed his horse could muster.

Palomides dismounted and stood amid the six fallen knights. Three were obviously dead, but the others were stirring. Palomides selected the one who seemed least injured—the one Dinadan had bashed in the knuckles—and jerked him to his feet. "Where are your masters?" the Moor asked sternly.

"My ... my masters?"

Palomides gave the knight a casual cuff in the helm with the back of his gauntlet, and the knight staggered backwards and dropped to one knee. "Your masters, Helius and Helake," Palomides said.

"I don't know what—" Palomides stepped forward and raised his gauntlet again. "They're at Withernsea Castle, your honor, waiting for us," the knight said hurriedly.

"Take us to them," Palomides said.

The knight dropped to his other knee. "I can't!" he said plaintively. "They'll kill me!"

"Very well," Palomides said. He turned to Dinadan and Sir Hermind. "Friends, this man came to commit murder. What is your judgment?"

"Death," Sir Hermind said grimly.

"Seems fair enough," agreed Dinadan.

Palomides lifted his sword, and the knight said, "I'll take you to them, if you like."

They rode toward Withernsea Castle two by two, with Palomides and their captive in the lead. Sir Hermind, who seemed much younger than he had before the battle, lifted his chin and said to Dinadan, "I don't know what I would have done had you and your friend not come along when you did."

"I'm glad we did," Dinadan murmured politely. "Lucky thing, too. What were the chances of two knights arriving just when you needed some help?"

"That is indeed amazing, for in truth you were not even the first knights to come to me as I waited for death."

Dinadan raised one eyebrow. "You mean someone else came along before we did?" Sir Hermind nodded, and Dinadan frowned. "Well, what happened to him?"

"He went away again."

"Didn't you tell him your story?" Dinadan asked.

"Most of it," Sir Hermind replied, but when I told him how Helius and Helake had usurped the throne, this knight said he wouldn't help. He said it was not fitting for a true knight to fight against the peasant-born."

"Silly ass," Dinadan commented. "It's true that Arthur tells his knights not to raise arms against peasants, but to leave you to die for such a scruple.... What an idiot that knight must be. You didn't catch his name, did you?"

Sir Hermind shook his head. "No, but he was very strange. His eyes were never still, and even as we talked he muttered to himself and twice pulled his sword to defend himself against enemies that he alone could see. And though he talked much, he said that he could not speak."

Dinadan closed his eyes. "Because he'd taken a vow of silence?"

"Why, yes. Do you know this knight?"

"It doesn't matter," Dinadan replied. "Tell me, Sir Hermind, have you thought about what we'll do once we get to the castle? I mean, what'll you do with the brothers?"

Sir Hermind's brow contracted. At length he said, "When I first came back, it was with the idea that I might somehow convince Helius and Helake that their tyranny had to stop, but that's no good anymore, is it? I mean, after they killed Hermance, they couldn't remain on the throne at all, could they?" Dinadan shook his head. Sir Hermind frowned more deeply. "I don't know."

"Worth thinking about," Dinadan said, adding cheerfully, "Of course, it may not matter; they may kill us."

Withernsea Castle was a towering fortress, with high ramparts that seemed to rise right out of the Humber River itself. It was built into a bend in the river, so that the river bounded the castle on two sides, and a wide canal had been dug around the other two sides, leaving the castle on an island. It would be nearly impossible to force an entrance, but oddly enough the drawbridge over the canal was down, and the gate open.

"There it is, your honor," Palomides's captive said. "Please don't make me go any further. The brothers have their throne room in that corner tower there, where they can see almost the whole kingdom. You'll find them soon enough without me."

Palomides nodded in dismissal, and the captive knight wheeled his horse and rode away as fast as he could. Palomides looked at the others. "It is strange that the gates are open. Is it a trap?"

"Probably," Dinadan said. "Does it make any difference?"

Palomides shook his head. "No. Whether a trap or no, we should never get into the castle otherwise. I say we cross now and take the adventure that befalls us."

"Off we go, then," Dinadan said, assuming a cheerfulness he didn't feel. They rode into the castle.

It was nearly deserted. The three dismounted and, drawing their swords, began looking around. A few servants passed them, but these showed no surprise at three armed knights roaming the castle halls and courts. Eventually they found the long, winding stair that led to the throne room, and they climbed the tower.

The throne room was nearly bare. In it was only a single wooden throne, with its high back to the door, facing a large window. The three stood at the door for a moment, wondering where to look next, when a voice came from the other side of the throne. "Come in, come in."

"Are you Helius and Helake?" Sir Hermind asked.

"I'm one of them," the voice replied. "Come around here where I can see you."

Sir Hermind and Palomides walked around the throne and turned to face the one seated on it. Dinadan, though, did not move. "Where is your brother?" Palo-mides asked.

The voice from the throne said, "Now how should I know that? Am I my brother's keeper?" Keeping his feet in position, so as not to make any noise on the stone floor, Dinadan looked carefully around the throne room. It seemed odd to find only one of the brothers here; everyone who had mentioned them had always spoken of them together.

"Perhaps you do not care for your brother," Sir Hermind said. "But I care for mine. I am Hermind, brother of the good king Hermance, whom you killed."

The voice replied with a mocking tone. "Come for the funeral, did you?"

"You gave him no funeral."

"Not his funeral," the voice replied. "Yours."

There was a movement at the window that the throne faced, behind Palomides's and Sir Hermind's backs. Dinadan looked up to see a burly young man step around from the parapet to the window and draw back a wicked looking boar spear, ready to impale Palomides from behind. Dinadan didn't stop to think. Dropping his sword, he lunged forward, roughly shouldering Sir Hermind into Palomides as he ran. Lowering his head, he threw himself forward into the man with the spear, and then they were both falling from the tower toward the river.

It was a long fall, quite long enough for Dinadan, unnaturally calm, to have several thoughts on the way. He hoped that the river was deep enough that they wouldn't just flatten themselves on the bottom, and then reflected that actually deep water wasn't much better, since he was in full armor and would sink like a rock. He wished with slight irritation that his companion on the fall would stop screaming so shrilly, and finally, just before hitting the water, he hoped that Brangienne was happy at the convent.

Dinadan's impact on the water was colossal. He would reflect later that in all likelihood he only survived the blow because of his armor, but it also knocked him completely unconscious. He had no memory from the moment of his hitting the water until he awoke some hours later on the bank of the river. It was dark, but the sky was clear and bright with stars, and against the sky Dinadan saw the dark outline of a slender, horned figure.

"Sylvanus?" he asked.

"It is good to see you again, my friend," the figure replied.

"Am I alive?"

"But of course. Else you would not be so sore."

Sylvanus was right. Every muscle ached fiercely. "But how? How did I survive the fall and the river?"

The outline of Sylvanus's cheek lifted slightly, and Dinadan knew the spirit was smiling. "The river didn't want you, my friend, but the one you brought with you. That one belonged to the river, and though it had been cheated of him once, many years ago, the river is patient. Perhaps it was grateful to you, and so it returned you to the air."

"Then I suppose I'm grateful, too. How is it that you're here? Just passing by?"

Sylvanus laughed, and his chuckle was music. "Hardly. I've been leading your friends' horses to you. They searched for you all afternoon, but were about to give up, so I had to help. Here they are now."

Sylvanus disappeared, and a minute later Dinadan heard riders approaching, speaking to each other in sombre tones. Recognizing the voices of Palomides and Hermind, Dinadan struggled up onto one elbow. "I hope you brought my horses, too," he called out, "because I sure don't feel like walking."

Dinadan and Palomides stayed at Withernsea Castle for two weeks, long after Dinadan felt well enough to ride. He didn't even have any broken bones, but from the fuss that Sir Hermind and the castle servants made over him, you'd have thought he was at death's door. At last he convinced everyone that he was well enough to ride, and he and Palomides took their leave. Sir Hermind—or rather, King Hermind, now—tried once again to convince them to stay, and said for the thousandth time that he didn't deserve the kingship. After all, Dinadan had killed one brother, and Palomides the second—by grasping him in a rage and throwing him through the throne room window after Dinadan and the first brother had gone over. (Dinadan never did learn whether it was Helius or Helake whom he had taken into the river, but it didn't seem to matter greatly.)

"But I tell you, you two were the ones who defeated the usurpers, so by rights you two should be kings instead of me."

"No true king is king by conquest," Palomides said. "You are king by right."

"But I never wanted to be king," Sir Hermind said.

"So much the better," replied Dinadan with a laugh. "After all, the brothers did want to be king and see what they were like? No, this is your home, not ours. Your place is at home." With that, the two friends mounted and rode away.

"So, where to?" Dinadan asked at last.

"As you said to Hermind," Palomides replied, "home. It is time for me to return to Araby."

Startled, Dinadan looked at the Moor. "But what about Camelot? Weren't you going to go there to see the greatest knights in the land?"

Palomides reined in his horse and looked fondly at Dinadan. "I need not go to Camelot for that, my lord Dinadan. I have found what I came for, and now I may return. Will you ride with me to the coast?"

Stunned, Dinadan could only nod, and they turned south toward Dover.

They did not get very far together, though. Just a few hours later, they were accosted by a knight—a wild, unkempt knight in stained golden armor. Dinadan groaned softly. "Halt and fight, foul recreants!" Tristram shouted shrilly.

"No," Palomides replied disdainfully. He started to ride on.

"Then I shall slay you like dogs," Tristram screamed. He drew his sword and began to swing it wildly about his head.

"Put that down right now, Tristram," Dinadan said sternly. "For the sake of your mother, Lady Giselle of the Fens, put that sword away."

Tristram froze. "Mother?" He turned unblinking eyes toward Dinadan, then began to cry. "But I love her, mother. And King Mark took her away, and now I have nothing." He lowered his sword.

Palomides looked curiously at Dinadan. "He is your brother," he said. It was not a question.

"Yes. A traitor and an ass and now a madman, but he's also my brother." Dinadan swallowed. "I'd better take him home."

"Then we will part now," Palomides said. He laid a hand on Dinadan's shoulder. "I will sing your songs in Araby."

Dinadan grinned. "And England will hear the Ballad of Sir Palomides."