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They say she is hundreds of years old, maybe thousands. There are wrinkles like great crevices in her face and Lancelot says she is more dead than alive. She is just the sort of old woman who would twitch the lace curtains if everyone did not live in windowless tower blocks.
They say the northern coast of Wales used to be beautiful. Hundreds of years ago, maybe thousands. They say she used to be beautiful, too.
“I wouldn’t have thought she’s your type,” says Arthur. Excalibur has not rusted and neither, it seems, has his easy charm. It is though he has never been king and never borne the weight of divide-and-conquer on his youthful shoulders. The air at Avalon does wonders for the skin, he says. He is thousands of years old. Lancelot’s type has invariably been Arthur’s type. “But by all means.”
“Bros before hos,” says Lancelot, thoughtfully. He looks older; a reincarnate who lived a blissfully ignorant youth before the memory or delusions of Lancelot du Lac almost broke his mind. “We should’ve had a saying like that.”
“We did,” says Arthur. His tone is mild. It is easy to be magnanimous when Camelot is dust. Breathe in, breathe out, perhaps the stones of Camelot are still floating in the air. “We called it chivalry.”
They don’t use swords now, Lancelot tells him, but Arthur cannot see the grace in an AK-47. He wonders, too, about the old woman. She is familiar in the way of all old ladies. A faint smell of cabbage and cats and Arthur supposes she is like everyone’s grandmother.
“The boys?” he asks.
Lancelot understands. “They’ll be here this evening. They’re scouting as far as Angelsey. “
Arthur tries to understand. His Knights, such that they are, ride motorycycles now and put the fear of the Almighty into the local delinquents. They say that the world is ending and that it is Arthur’s time. Billboards proclaim the second coming of Christ and herald that the end is nigh but there is no shortage of mortal saviours in this world. None of them are Arthur, though.
Galahad and Mordred are an unlikely duo. Whenever they come to visit, the old lady plies them with digestive biscuits before she vanishes back into her dark apartment.
“She likes you,” Galahad says to Mordred. His white leathers lie in a pile on top of Mordred’s black leathers and they are chess pieces at the world’s ending.
“I probably remind her of her son or something,” says Mordred.
He was probably a bad lot, too, are the words that go unsaid.
It is a peculiar ménage-a-quatre. Arthur is the implacable leader. There is no doubting and no arguing his authority. Lancelot is a study in loyalty. They say he is as chaste as his son, though Arthur knows better. Galahad, best of knights, rides a white Ducati and makes the girls swoon. Mordred never smiles and this reincarnated body of his bears an uncanny resemblance to his former self.
“The bastard line flourished,” says Lancelot.
“The once and future Bastard,” says Mordred. He has had too much to drink and Arthur regards him coolly; this sole son of his, like a strawberry runner raising his head above the soil. One must make do.
The living room is the war room. Sometime, the rest of the Orkneys come in from the cold. The last member of the Royal Family is dying and they bring the health bulletins from Scotland. The wretched little prince is what Agravaine calls him. They sit around the scored and scarred kitchen table and contemplate Arthur’s ascension.
Lancelot is, invariably, absent when the Orkneys arrive. He skulks around the other tower blocks and, in the night, he tells Arthur about them; the ugly blocks of concrete that blot every landscape in Britain.
“They are filled with gods,” he says, for even kings love fairy tales. Lancelot’s lips touch Arthur’s shoulder. “On dull nights, Zeus and Thor throw thunderbolts at each other for fun.”
“Do not speak to me of dull nights or knights,” mumbles Arthur, arching for a kiss that he can taste.
They do not think about how, in the living room, on the fold-out bed that creaks, Mordred and Galahad are similarly entangled.
“Tell me about nuclear weapons,” says Arthur. He does not like modern warfare but he expects to have to learn about it.
They say that Agravaine’s wretched little prince is dying of radiation sickness. It makes a change from congenital syphilis or patricide.
“Tell me about Avalon,” says Lancelot. There are years and lives between them now.
“Tell me about the future,” says Mordred.
Galahad’s reply is muffled against Mordred’s back. He was not brought up in a monastery in this life. He is slender and sharp like a knife, his elbows digging into Mordred when he is so fast asleep that he sprawls, unknowing. He does not like this world. Chivalry is dead. Long live the modern knight, rallying around King Arthur’s banners and burrowing under his spare blankets.
“Does it not seem strange that we are brought together again, to repeat the same mistakes? That is the future.”
“I was never your mistake, Galahad.” Mordred turns. “You did not make mistakes. You have saved them all for me and for now.” The bed creaks and, all at once, they are like teenagers, huddling together and hoping that they will not be caught in the act. They laugh, soundlessly and underneath the covers, as though their fathers do not know.
Across the hall, the old woman closes her rheumy eyes. These boys are not her boys but they could have been. They should have been. She loved their fathers, dearly. Perhaps she loves them still ,but her sight is not what it used to be and her skin is thin and papery. She should have had sons. She might have been less despised.
Arthur, Once and Future King, is standing on the threshold of greatness, his toes curling within his steel-capped boots and he bounces on his heels on the stained linoleum floor.
He has been renewed while she has suffered the iniquity of age. This is repentance in its truest form. A once beautiful queen bows her head and her knotted, arthritic hands fold together in prayer. Forgive me, Father, for I have sinned.